Hair Is Blowin’ in the Wind

What is it about Al Gore? He can step into the sunshine and draw storm clouds as fast as anyone in politics. Even solid ideas melt in his grip and end up in a puddle at his feet.

So now he’s threatening to give beards a bad name.

Surely you saw the photograph of Gore traveling in Europe with a new brush of character to his face: the start of what could have been a lively beard. My first reaction was, good show.

To me, the razor is to the modern man what high heels are to liberated women: silly social contrivances that make our days less comfortable and for no good reason.

Beards are many other things, and I have deep affection for them. But one thing beards are not is equivocal. At least a proper beard isn’t.

Except on the face of Al Gore. No sooner was the picture snapped than “associates” confided that the whiskers were Gore’s summer vacation fling and wouldn’t be seen when the victorious presidential loser returned to the U.S. to begin his reentry into politics.

Within hours, our nation’s claque of political insiders began to bait him. I think the underlying message was: Al Gore isn’t enough of a man to wear a beard. I found myself sharing these doubts. I wondered if Gore would hear the taunts and, as if to prove his critics right, immediately have an identity crisis. I pictured him in the bathroom saying to himself, “Yikes, what have I done?”

As usual, what he’s done is try to get somewhere on unsteady feet.

Anyway, I hope his associates are wrong. It’s been a century since we’ve had a bearded president (Rutherford Hayes, 1903). I’d like to see Gore give it a go. A robust beard would stand him good with me, and there’s more to it than fad or fashion.

The group-think of social conformity seems to be on the upswing again in America. I feel its chokehold wherever I turn. We could use a break. I could use a break. Bring on a few beards.

Younger readers may wonder if this is a subject worth discussion. I mean, aren’t there important matters before us? To them I say, yes and no. Men like Al Gore and George W. Bush, and me, came of age in one of those episodic eras when hair assumed importance beyond all logic. During that time we call the ‘60s, America’s dividing line was drawn by threads of hair. On one side were the longhairs. Everyone else was on the other side. Afro hair, long hair and beards defined many things: rebellion, drugs, the sexual revolution, amplified music. But let’s not forget, long hair and beards defined idealism too.

As happened, hair determined the course of my life. Because I let my Marine Corps burr cut grow out after my discharge, the Mexicans wouldn’t let me cross the border. Because I then had no place to loaf for a summer in Mexico, I enrolled in college on the spot rather than wait for autumn admission to the forestry program at Montana State. Because the college at hand didn’t offer a program in forestry, I chose journalism.

I could have gotten a haircut instead. We made decisions like that back then. There was a principle to it. It didn’t seem to matter that I had worn my country’s uniform in Vietnam and had the ribbons to prove it. A social order we called the “establishment” judged me by my hair, not my deeds, my heart or my beliefs. So I let them.

And today I wear a beard. I could tell you about the time I save every day by not shaving (it adds up to four months in a lifetime) and dig up other lighthearted factoids about beards. But at least some of the matter harks back to the idealism of 1960s.

There was something good in the wind then, a sense of possibility, a search for meaning beyond the material, an idea that life was more than cutthroat competition and lock-step conformity. Not all the values of the ‘60s were right, far from it. But I’m afraid that my generation squandered those that were while embracing much of what it once doubted. Al Gore could remind us of what we thought was possible.

OK, maybe he couldn’t.

But if he grew into his beard, he might.