Popular Culture under Al Gore Presidency?

In an ATL, Al Gore wins the Presidential Election in 2000 against George Bush, going to lead the United States for the next 4-8 years. How would this affect movies, books, television, music, video games, the internet, and other forms of entertainment throughout his years in office and beyond? Would they be for the best? or the worst?

One thing that I can see being butterflied away is the Iraq War, which would heavily affect the Call of Duty Franchise and many other military-related media.
 

GeographyDude

Gone Fishin'
. . . One thing that I can see being butterflied away is the Iraq War, . . .
9/11 still happens. Some chance we only fight Al Qaeda within Afghanistan, and the Taliban is intimidated enough to allow us. Most likely we do fight the Taliban and fully go into Afghanistan. And hopefully we spend the resources to do a solid job of rebuilding.

I hope we avoid going into Iraq.

But people have argued here that since Gore believed in coercive diplomacy regarding Iraq’s nuclear program, well, shit that can easily slide into war.

There hasn’t been many big budget Hollywood movies looking at the dark side of war, not like there was in the ‘70s and ‘80s about the Vietnam War. Frankly, there’s been a lot of war worship, and worship of the police, even a decade plus after Sept. 11th, and more so than at any time which I can remember since the ‘70s.

Maybe a shorter, cleaner, more largely “successful” war in Afghanistan, more bravery in looking for stories which involve real tension between the good and bad sides of war?
 

Marc

Donor
The anti-woman movement stalls during the 2000's. Sorry, but the war on choice is just that.
And, you get two moderate to progressive Supreme Court appointments, including Chief Justice which is still a big deal.
 
I guess it depends on if Gore is reelected in 2004. If he is, probably on the basis of foreign policy success and a decent economy, then the GOP of 2008 is going to look very interesting, having been out of power for more than a decade and probably spending a good chunk of that time hopping mad. The way I see it, without Bush to galvanize a lot of the liberal base things will look substantially different on the popular culture front. Comedians couldn't use the "our President is an idiot" joke.
 
The anti-woman movement stalls during the 2000's. Sorry, but the war on choice is just that.
And, you get two moderate to progressive Supreme Court appointments, including Chief Justice which is still a big deal.

I'm as politically motivated about abortion as anyone (though clearly on the opposite side) but do we really need to turn this into yet another name calling thread on that?

Regarding Gore's portrayal I think we'll get plenty of 'the President is boring' jokes akin to 'The Simpsons' version ('Celebrate good times!' 'I will.')
 
The anti-woman movement stalls during the 2000's. Sorry, but the war on choice is just that.
And, you get two moderate to progressive Supreme Court appointments, including Chief Justice which is still a big deal.

The GOP would get away with restricting abortion more than OTL. Why? to incentivize women to vote for democrats. Notice Obama's OTL doing nothing to undo partial-birth abortion bans or codifying roe v. wade as the MINIMUM standard under federal law even when he had the majority.
 

CalBear

Moderator
Donor
Monthly Donor
The anti-woman movement stalls during the 2000's. Sorry, but the war on choice is just that.
And, you get two moderate to progressive Supreme Court appointments, including Chief Justice which is still a big deal.
Keep current political screeds in Chat.

Thanks.
 
- No "American Idiot".

I hope it happens anyway and a least just has different lyrics. No sense in butterflying “Canadian Idiot.”

Regarding Gore's portrayal I think we'll get plenty of 'the President is boring' jokes akin to 'The Simpsons' version ('Celebrate good times!' 'I will.')

Not familiar with that but I know he voiced himself on Futurama and portrayed himself as something of an authoritative dweeb. Except after 9/11 when his demeanor will likely change somewhat, that’s kind of how I see a President Gore/
 
In an ATL, Al Gore wins the Presidential Election in 2000 against George Bush, going to lead the United States for the next 4-8 years. How would this affect movies, books, television, music, video games, the internet, and other forms of entertainment throughout his years in office and beyond? Would they be for the best? or the worst?

One thing that I can see being butterflied away is the Iraq War, which would heavily affect the Call of Duty Franchise and many other military-related media.

A lot of video games from that era would be butterflies. SpecOps: The Line is pretty clearly an allegory for the Iraq War so that’s out along with any other movie or TV show about OIF. A lot of projects that lingered in development hell forever might get more progress. Black Mass and the Dark Tower might come out in the early 2000s and get better treatment. OTL Dark Tower was horrible, OTL Black Mass was ok but could have been incredible. The holy grail would be to get Denis Vilenueva, Martin Scorcese, or perhaps Clint Eastwood to direct it.

Sports would be interesting. I think Pat Tillman would probably survive; his death was pretty much a complete fluke and Gore winning would totally scramble the sequence of events that led up to it like his earlier Iraq deployment. That would have interesting effects.

Tiger Woods was actually serious about joining the Navy SEALs. The consensus among his inner circle is that if he had beaten Nicklaus’s record for championships won, he would probably have hung up the clubs and enlisted. Considering his motivation to emulate his father, his incredible discipline, fitness, and competitive fire as an athlete, and his demonstrated mental and physical toughness (winning a major championship with a torn ACL when he could hardly walk) I would say he would have probably made it. If the butterflies lead to him executing his swing change in maybe 2001-02, perhaps after a not so serious injury, he might break the record by 2006 and join. You can get an age waiver for a SEAL Challenge Contract to age 30, so he would still have been young enough. I’ve actually been planning to use this in one of my stories.
 
FPS games would be ALOT less common due to more of an atmosphere of moral panic about them. Democrats staying more moralistic in the 1990s/pre-obama way would mean the psychological void that provided an opening for SJW types to exploit. Of course given how _that_ got started OTL due to a few goons trolling the wrong set of bloggers it seems alot of the post-2000s changes in the western left are extremely historically delicate, so that would be gone.

Greens not being discredited diverts alot of 'far left', what might be called SJW activism to them which is big as far as sexuality in media in come ttl's 2010s, if not that relevant for Gore. Maybe for his successor. Less Concern about sex in games but violence remains more controversial than OTL.

SC definitely does a ruling like OTL's 2011 ruling saying videogames are covered under freedom of speech due to some particularly busybody state's probably trying to regulate sales of m games earlier than OTL.

Investors might not be as willing to put money into the industry, so it probably takes longer for marketing to get it's OTL MASSIVE budget. Delays for the adoption of games as a service, paid online for consoles,DLC, microtransactions.

The "PROTECT THE CHILDREN" mindset being more prevelant means expect regulation of mobile gaming to prevent it being microtransaction hell. Who knows, maybe the 99 cent to $5 asset flips/shovelware that exists on steam might be on android/IOS app stores instead.
 

The two main questions of any hypothetical Gore administration are if he wins without the Florida Incident, and whether or not you want to butterfly 9/11 at the same time. Given than nobody else is, I'll cover a scenario in which neither of these happen, no matter how unlikely it is.

As 9/11 was for good or ill the defining point which marked the beginning of the 21st Century culturally, it is rather difficult to picture an alternate Noughties without it slipping into a more extreme '90s, at least in America, as while there isn't as big an insistence on being a Proud American Patriot Who Supports The Troops (TM), the inherent social conservatism and consumerist conformity behind Suburbia is likely to continue however long you want to delay the subprime mortgage crisis (which will hit, and will be seen as something akin to 9/11 in terms of its destruction of the comfortable fantasy that permeated the era). On this front, expect a lot more in the way of McMansions, Soccer Moms, and the Helen Lovejoy mindset (remember, Columbine and the resultant moral panic still happened), but without the sense of lost innocence and the deification of the military that permeated in post-9/11 media. To this end, I expect the 2000s media landscape to be a sterilised continuation of the 1990's (doubly so if the Nipplegate debacle still happens), with the dark and edgy escapism of OTL 2000s media possibly being delayed until the Millennials fully come of age in a repeat of the counterculture movement, albeit without the backdrop of the War On Terror, and without the convenient scapegoat that Terrorists pose.

The second issue is equally monumental than the first, as the bitter divisiveness of the 2000 election, and the Florida recount effectively created the Red America/Blue America divide that defines American politics as it is today. Therefore, I believe that lacking that divisiveness, and as a direct result of the aforementioned Suburbian Consensus, coupled with the New Democrats effectively proving themselves the only electable version of it, and the partial electoral rejection of Gingrich-style obstructionism by way of two successive momentum-sapping losses forcing the Republicans to shift back to more moderate rhetoric, the 2000s politically becomes a choice of two flavours of Neoliberalism. This situation is reflected worldwide as New Labour and the Third Way becomes the defining "leftist" ideology for the duration of the pre-Recession era. This results in a noticeable lack in political polarisation relative to OTL, and a reduced geographical loyalty outside the South that could even continue to exist post-Recession.

My final, (and most realistic) prediction in this scenario is that Beltran doesn't get caught looking, and the Mets win it all in '06.​
 
As 9/11 was for good or ill the defining point which marked the beginning of the 21st Century culturally, it is rather difficult to picture an alternate Noughties without it slipping into a more extreme '90s, at least in America, as while there isn't as big an insistence on being a Proud American Patriot Who Supports The Troops (TM), the inherent social conservatism and consumerist conformity behind Suburbia is likely to continue however long you want to delay the subprime mortgage crisis (which will hit, and will be seen as something akin to 9/11 in terms of its destruction of the comfortable fantasy that permeated the era). On this front, expect a lot more in the way of McMansions, Soccer Moms, and the Helen Lovejoy mindset (remember, Columbine and the resultant moral panic still happened), but without the sense of lost innocence and the deification of the military that permeated in post-9/11 media. To this end, I expect the 2000s media landscape to be a sterilised continuation of the 1990's (doubly so if the Nipplegate debacle still happens), with the dark and edgy escapism of OTL 2000s media possibly being delayed until the Millennials fully come of age in a repeat of the counterculture movement, albeit without the backdrop of the War On Terror, and without the convenient scapegoat that Terrorists pose.​
In this environment, I wonder if The Simpsons can maintain its edge for longer, or if it actually gets cancelled at some point.
 
The two main questions of any hypothetical Gore administration are if he wins without the Florida Incident, and whether or not you want to butterfly 9/11 at the same time. Given than nobody else is, I'll cover a scenario in which neither of these happen, no matter how unlikely it is.

As 9/11 was for good or ill the defining point which marked the beginning of the 21st Century culturally, it is rather difficult to picture an alternate Noughties without it slipping into a more extreme '90s, at least in America, as while there isn't as big an insistence on being a Proud American Patriot Who Supports The Troops (TM), the inherent social conservatism and consumerist conformity behind Suburbia is likely to continue however long you want to delay the subprime mortgage crisis (which will hit, and will be seen as something akin to 9/11 in terms of its destruction of the comfortable fantasy that permeated the era). On this front, expect a lot more in the way of McMansions, Soccer Moms, and the Helen Lovejoy mindset (remember, Columbine and the resultant moral panic still happened), but without the sense of lost innocence and the deification of the military that permeated in post-9/11 media. To this end, I expect the 2000s media landscape to be a sterilised continuation of the 1990's (doubly so if the Nipplegate debacle still happens), with the dark and edgy escapism of OTL 2000s media possibly being delayed until the Millennials fully come of age in a repeat of the counterculture movement, albeit without the backdrop of the War On Terror, and without the convenient scapegoat that Terrorists pose.

The second issue is equally monumental than the first, as the bitter divisiveness of the 2000 election, and the Florida recount effectively created the Red America/Blue America divide that defines American politics as it is today. Therefore, I believe that lacking that divisiveness, and as a direct result of the aforementioned Suburbian Consensus, coupled with the New Democrats effectively proving themselves the only electable version of it, and the partial electoral rejection of Gingrich-style obstructionism by way of two successive momentum-sapping losses forcing the Republicans to shift back to more moderate rhetoric, the 2000s politically becomes a choice of two flavours of Neoliberalism. This situation is reflected worldwide as New Labour and the Third Way becomes the defining "leftist" ideology for the duration of the pre-Recession era. This results in a noticeable lack in political polarisation relative to OTL, and a reduced geographical loyalty outside the South that could even continue to exist post-Recession.

My final, (and most realistic) prediction in this scenario is that Beltran doesn't get caught looking, and the Mets win it all in '06.​

Granted, it could be possible that Gore manages to luck out and stop 9/11 through better intelligence works and opportunities.

Another thing to consider is that there is the Enron crisis and things like more school shootings and so on will turn the focus more toward domestically.

I do have a question about Gore. If he is President, would he accept the deal with Iran that was made back in 2003 (assuming the deal is still made even without the invasion of Iraq)
 
With no Bush. Punchlines in The Simpsons and especially Family Guy don't exist and American Dad would likey be radically different or non-existent. Possibly King of the Hill takes up a more explicitly poltical side of things. Taking on goverment bureaucrats,poltical correctness and soapbox sadie's. Much more in a more center-left environment with a background of a post 9-11 America possibly not doing enough to fight terrorism.

24 would also be less action heavy and more focused on fighting obsuritive bureaucrats,local authorities and civil rights advocates as much as terrorists.
 
With no Bush. Punchlines in The Simpsons and especially Family Guy don't exist and American Dad would likey be radically different or non-existent. Possibly King of the Hill takes up a more explicitly poltical side of things. Taking on goverment bureaucrats,poltical correctness and soapbox sadie's. Much more in a more center-left environment with a background of a post 9-11 America possibly not doing enough to fight terrorism.

24 would also be less action heavy and more focused on fighting obsuritive bureaucrats,local authorities and civil rights advocates as much as terrorists.
First, Family Guy started in 1999, so it'd still exist ITTL, and I feel like 24 would flop in a no-9/11 world.
 
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