The Media Get Kicked Out of Class   

The day before Al Gore was set to teach his first class to eager young students at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism on February 6, the final word came down: The former Veep would not hold a press conference before or after class--or discuss what he planned to teach. A former media mandate was reiterated: Press would absolutely not be allowed in the J-school building, let alone the classroom.

Here's what Gore would do: Smile and wave. He would do it sometime between 2:45 and 3:15 p.m. If you wanted to snap a picture of him doing it, you were advised to take up your position in the "holding area for photographers" outside the J-school "no later than 2 p.m."

Media types hoping for more than a photo op were not happy. Reporters had been trying to get the story on the class since Al's debut was announced in late January: What would he teach? How did he intend to mold these impressionable minds?

When the J-school administrators responded with shrugs, reporters offered their own best guesses. "Perhaps he'll buzz onto campus riding a motorcycle and decked in leather, like he did in his wild-man days on Harvard Yard," wrote Gabriel Snyder in the New York Observer. "Maybe he'll gather the kids around and recall his late nights tackling Marx's theory of alienation for guru-to-be Marty Peretz's trenchant 'Selected Problems of an Advanced Industrial Society' class. Maybe Mr. Gore will screen 'Love Story'!"

Writing in the Washington Post, Bruce McCall suggested a few wonkish props for Gore to tote to class, including a "video of grain harvest (cut to 2 hrs)" and "press coverage of A.G. family tour of bauxite quarry." Clearly, matters were getting desperate.

On the day of the class, I arrived at Columbia shortly after 2 to find the media engine already in full rev. A few students were scattered about the steps in front of the J-school building with reporters bunched around them like pigeons pecking at breadcrumbs.

Angry pigeons.

"Aren't you shocked at the ridiculous hypocrisy of the press not being let into the class?" notorious tabloid columnist Steve Dunleavy, of the New York Post, boomed at Michael Rey, a J-schooler who was not one of the 60 lucky students who would attend Gore's class.

"I don't know if I'd call it hypocrisy. Irony maybe..." said Rey.

"Not hypocrisy?" Dunleavy snapped. "The bedrock of journalism saying fuck off to the very people it claims to promote? You're not ashamed to be associated with such absurd pomposity?"

"Well, I...uh...I guess I might be a little pissed off that I couldn't get into the course."

"Ah-ha! A little pissed off!" Dunleavy exclaimed, poking his cigarette in the brisk air for emphasis. "I'm going to quote you on that!"

Later, after Dunleavy called him a "young preppy" and a "nitwit" for attending J-school instead of becoming a movie star "like Ed Burns...I made Ed Burns" and tottered off to berate others, the distinctly unpreppy Rey told me he actually wasn't too bothered about missing Gore's first lecture. He figured he'd have his chance on one of Gore's return visits. (There will be between six and eight 90-minute lectures.)

None of the students kept out of the class seemed to share the working press' outrage. J-school student Katie Prout said that even though she wasn't in the class, she was still learning something from Gore's visit. "I like to see mobs of media in action," she said.

Prout got an eyeful when Gore--dressing the professorial part to comical extreme in beige jacket, maroon V-neck and green trousers (earth tones that would make Naomi Wolf proud)--strolled up to the J-school, ear-pieced Secret Service people in tow. Students applauded, video rolled, cameras flashed.

Gore smiled and waved, then paused to shake hands with the startled-looking policeman guarding the door. That handshake, the merest deviation from the agreed-upon behavior, unleashed a torrent of questions from the notebook-gripping throngs.

"How do you feel?" someone hollered.

"I feel great. I'm very excited about it," he responded, expansively.

"Why won't you let the press in?" fired someone else.

"That's the school's policy," said Gore, getting a whiff of the crowd's ire and beginning to recoil.

"But you can change that! You could force them to let us in!"

"I'm new here," Gore quipped. "That's above my pay grade."

Then--with a final smile and wave--he disappeared inside.

Students in the class lingered outside a few moments longer, giving sound bites, getting their names in papers they'd kill to write for (but for which they were forbidden to write about Gore's lecture). What's more, J-school administration said the class would be off the record, "a courtesy" given to professors. (After the first class, Columbia revoked that rule in the face of much criticism.)

"It's no big deal," said aspiring journalist Andy Pergam of Gore's visit. "He's just another lecturer."

"It's a great opportunity!" countered his classmate Michael Arnone, who sported a tie for the occasion and, clearly enjoying his moment in the spotlight, revealed that he'd turned down all sorts of offers to write about the class. "How many other students have a chance to hear what Al Gore has to say?"

After the students had retreated and the reporters began to traipse off to file or to wait until class was dismissed, Dunleavy could still be heard bleating about "freedom of the press" and the "absolute insult" of it all. "It's an irony upon an irony followed by a bizarre moment of cataclysmic collision!" he bellowed.

"Well," ventured one soft-voiced reporter. "You know, the thing is, I don't think it's so bad they didn't let us in. I mean, you know, if they did, we'd all get on them for making it into a PR stunt and using these kids to do it."

But he said it so quietly, hardly anyone seemed to hear him.