After I came home from the fabulous sold out Maher -Coulter debate, I began to wonder something. The next big show on the MSG Speaker series is the Al Gore show on April 1st. If two circus acts like Maher and Coulter can sell out the Chicago Theater it should be no problem for an elder Statesman like Gore whose mantle holds trophies from the Nobel, Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy organizations. Certainly a man so popular with the elite should have no trouble selling out the joint.
A couple clicks on the Ticketmaster link assured me that there is no danger of a People’s Choice Award on that mantle anytime soon, since the public isn’t buying Gore. With a little more than two weeks before showtime, it is still possible to purchase six seats on the main floor, center stage, row K. Ouch.
Turns out that even hardcore Al Gore supporters cannot imagine sitting through an hour of listening to him. People like the idea of Al Gore far more than the actual person. They want him to speak much more than they care to listen. It’s much easier to give him an Academy Award than to sit through his movie. Ditto on his Emmy awarded for Current TV, a cable channel with scant evidence of capturing even a single viewer.
So what could Al Gore do to move some of the tickets? I did notice that he is the only solo act on the entire Speaker Series. All the other acts have agreed to a debate or round-table format. This solution worked quite well for Bill Maher, as evidenced by the sold out Chicago Theater show–as recently as last July, he could not sell out an entire house by himself. An inside source tells me that he gave free tickets away after a Chris Rock show and sold two-for-ones in order to get an audience into his Minneapolis Orpheum show (that’s Dark Blue Minneapolis). He was able to put the butts in the seats last Wednesday by adding Ann Coulter to the ticket
Of course, Al Gore would never do that. Al Gore refuses to debate and has declared the Global Warming debate over. My friend Jerry Agar suggests this is not because he doesn’t want to debate, but because he CAN’T debate. If Al Gore were to face an opponent who actually studied science in college rather than spending football weekends driving sorority girls out to the family vacation retreat, everyone would recognize Global Warming Apocalysim for the fraudulent house of cards it really is.
What an opportunity we have here. The entire Chicago Theater could be purchased for under a quarter mil. With only a small handful of Al Gore fans having bought tickets, it would be very easy to fill the house with skeptics and overwhelm the supporters. Imagine the red faced tantrum that Prince Albert would toss as one baseless claim after another is booed down by the audience.
Of course, that probably won’t happen. Between the overwhelming indifference of the general public and the propensity of Mr. G to create a snowstorm wherever he goes, I’m ready to lay ten to one odds that the show gets canceled.
Get Tim Slagle’s CD: Europa available on iTunes and Amazon for details go to www.timslagle.com
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.