Matt Damon, People’s Sexiest Man Alive for 2007, is in good company.

The magazine started the award in 1985, with Mel Gibson. Past winners include: Mark Harmon, Harry Hamlin, John F. Kennedy Jr., Sean Connery, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Nick Nolte, Richard Gere, Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, George Clooney, Harrison Ford, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Affleck, Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Matthew McConaughey.

Not every candidate would welcome an endorsement from a guy known as “Meathead.”

But when that guy is Rob Reiner — Meathead in the 1970s television hit All in the Family — you take the endorsement and run.

Reiner, the 62-year-old actor, director, comedian and political activist, and one of the most connected people in Hollywood and Democratic politics, came out for Hillary Rodham Clinton in September.

Sure, he’s won every award known to man except the Olympic gold. (Unless he gets into wrestling or weight lifting, that honor seems beyond even his reach.)

But the main achievement of Al Gore is not his comeback from having the White House snatched away, not his Oscar or even his sharing of the Nobel Peace Prize, announced today.

The real phenomenon of Al Gore is how connected he has become despite (and because of) his losing the presidency.

Gore has forged strong bonds not only in politics, science and the international environmental movement, but in finance, high-tech and Hollywood.