If it weren’t for the fact that I follow Bill O’Reilly’s twitter feed, I probably wouldn’t have caught this.

Yeah, that’s sad.

Last week, the LA Times reported that Al and Tipper Gore purchased a roughly $9,000,000 Italian-style villa with an ocean view in Montecino, CA.

The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

I’m sure it’s lit with LED and compact florescent light bulbs, right?

Back in ’07, when the story broke about Gore’s 10,000 square foot mansion in Tennessee, I shrugged. He defended himself: don’t attack the messenger just because you don’t like the message. And then he purchased carbon offsets, etc., etc. If you’re rich in American, I reasoned, you have a larger carbon footprint. It comes with the territory.

But after all that, wouldn’t you think he would learn?

The really crappy thing about all this is that it will give climate-change deniers all the more fuel for their fire. In this new anti-green investment, they can see plenty of justification for the claim that Gore is in the climate change fight to make more money, not to save the planet.

In the political world, sometimes the messenger is the message.

Walk the talk, man.