“ A young man who is not a liberal has no heart. An old man who is not a conservative has no brain.” -Winston Churchill-I know some of my readers will find this revelation surprising, but at one point in my life I thought I might be a Democrat.While I still wouldn’t call myself a Republican, I would like to say that it was people like Al Gore who drove me away from any Democratic loyalties, but looking back, I think it was not people like Al Gore at all.It was indeed Al Gore.Gore, who has spent the last two weeks defending the sale of his television network to Saudi oil money, really got my attention in the early 1990s when he was busted by a local TV station for hypocrisy when they found several illegal dumps on his Smith County farm.Then he began to fight “big tobacco” while continuing to grow the plant for profit.When he was caught red-handed in 1997 improperly dialing for campaign money in the White House, his defense was that there was “no controlling legal authority.”The hair-raising YouTube videos of His Goreness telling stadiums full of people that it was time for them to suffer for the cause of global warming while his fleet of SUVs (one for each family member) idled outside for hours did not help stifle the idea that Gore was endorsing a double standard.Now, on the ex-vice president’s recent tour to promote his latest book, the global warming guru spent most of his time explaining why he felt it appropriate to line his pockets (to the tune of $100 million) with money from the very fossil-fuel interests he has vilified for years as contributors to global warming.Interviewers as diverse as Matt Lauer, David Letterman and Jon Stewart all tried to clear up the matter of how Gore could justify his December decision to sell his cable network (Current TV) to an international network (Al Jazeera) that's owned a Middle Eastern oil producer (Qatar).While Gore complained that Current TV “found it difficult to compete in an age of conglomerates,” and that it is “tough for an independent network to compete,” he never reconciled his supposed beliefs with the sale.He protested that Al Jazeera was a well-established, award-winning network with a great reputation, telling Matt Lauer "I get the criticism. I just disagree with it."