Reverend Benny & Mister Sid's At Your Service #43

The latest edition of Salem, Oregon's original cartoon series.

By Glen Bledsoe

(Salem) - During the 2000 election Chris Tucker noted the resemblance of Al Gore to actor Christopher Reeve who played Superman in four movies made during the late 70's and 80's. Tucker said if Gore would appear in a Superman costume he would win the presidency. Gore, not heeding this advice, lost to George Bush, but probably for other reasons.

Tucker got it wrong. Anyone familiar with the Superman legend knows that it's not Superman but Superman's father Jor-El who Gore most closely parallels. Their names are even variations of one another. Al Gore with a simple swap of syllables becomes Gore Al. The hard "g" /g/ becomes a soft sounding "g" /j/ and Gore-Al becomes Jor-El.

Jor-El warned that home planet Krypton was going to destroy itself, but the Rush Limbaughs of Krypton scoffed at him until it was too late. Jor-El had only one option: send his son off to a new world before Krypton exploded into a shower of kryptonite meteors. Al Gore cries his own warnings about the danger which faces our world with this note: There are no other worlds to send our children.

Parents all wish their children to have an easier and better life than they had. Unfortunately our culture has been living like a drunken Roman emperor plundering the planet's resources and poisoning our air and water. The problems we leave for our children to solve will challenge them far greater than we have ever been challenged ourselves. We can only hope that the problems can be solved. Earth is not likely to explode like Krypton, but none of us wants to see the world turned into a desert with famine and war decimating our numbers until only a handful of humans struggle to survive in a hostile environment.

Let us now turn to Gerald, the young protagonist of our story. The challenges facing him are other-worldly in yet another way.

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