Al & Tipper Gore Split After 40 Years

Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife Tipper Gore are legally separated and planning to divorce, according to an email sent to their friends. The email text: (PDF)

Cartoon courtesy of Brett Noel

From: Al & Tipper Gore

Date: June 1, 2010 12:21:48 PM EDT
Subject: Message from Al & Tipper Gore

Hi,

We wanted to share this personal news with you because we care so much about you as a friend:

We are announcing today that after a great deal of thought and discussion, we have decided to separate.

This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration.

We ask for respect for our privacy and that of our family, and we do not intend to comment further.

Hope to see you soon.

Al and Tipper

The timing of the announcement is strange, coming just weeks after their 40th wedding anniversary on May 19 and two months after buying an $8.8 million home in California. Questions circling Washington: Was the Gores’ famous open-mouth kiss at the 2000 Democratic convention just a staged political ploy? Was this always just a marriage of convenience for Al’s political career? How long until Tipper writes a book on the breakup and goes on Oprah?

Sarah Ferguson on Oprah

Sarah Ferguson—aka Fergie, aka Duchess of York—told Oprah Winfrey Tuesday that she accepted a bribe for access to her ex-husband Prince Andrew because she was drunk and broke. Fergie confessed to pop culture’s high priestess Oprah that she was wrong to accept $700,000 in a sting by an undercover reporter.

Fergie explained that the reason she agreed to sell access to her daughters’ father was: “I’ve been drinking, you know, that I was not in my right place.” The video of the sting shows Fergie smoking and sitting on a couch with an open bottle of red wine and a single wine glass on the table in front of her. She also told Oprah she is heavily in debt and desperate.

Fergie told the reporter that she receives $22,000 a year in her divorce settlement, but British tabloids says she has received more than $7 million from the royal family. The last time Fergie, 50, was in financial straits, she embarrassed the royal family by becoming the spokeswoman for the diet program Weight Watchers. This time, her former royal highness apparently wants to go on the reality TV show “Dancing with the Stars” to pay off her debts.

Queen Elizabeth is the richest woman in the world, so why not just give her granddaughters’ mother a sizeable annual income and save her family from Fergie’s repeated public humiliations?