Hanna , can’t you just see Hillary Clinton with that tight little smile taking in the news that she’s still married but those moralistic Gores are splitting? Well, the Gores have come up with quite a way of celebrating their 40 th anniversary, and that’s by going their separate ways . Remember “the Kiss,” Al’s extended lip-lock with Tipper when he got the Democratic nomination? Al’s assertion that he and Tipper were the model for the doomed couple in Love Story ? Now their love really is doomed. Couples who split after 40 years upend one’s belief about marriage. What about all those studies showing that after the stress of raising the kids and worrying about career and money, the couples who make it experience a late-in-life honeymoon? Sure, we all know long-time married couples who end it, but usually those aren’t the people you’ve been looking at for decades and saying, “Now they have the ideal marriage!” There’s no good way for the Gores to announce this, but there is something not quite right in their assertion that the decision to stop being a couple is a way of being “mutually supportive.” I wonder if their recently purchased $9 million mansion in Montecito -the couple’s fourth huge home-is his beachside carbon-neutral mega-bachelor-pad or her place to start over. And I know I’m a cynic, but I can’t help but wonder if eventually we’ll find out the reason for this split is that there’s more than the environment that’s heating up Al’s life.
