Vanity Fair: The Media/Going After Gore

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Joolz
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Vanity Fair: The Media/Going After Gore

Post by Joolz » 09-05-2007 01:29 AM

The Media
Going After Gore

Al Gore couldn't believe his eyes: as the 2000 election heated up, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other top news outlets kept going after him, with misquotes ("I invented the Internet"), distortions (that he lied about being the inspiration for Love Story), and strangely off-the-mark needling, while pundits such as Maureen Dowd appeared to be charmed by his rival, George W. Bush. For the first time, Gore and his family talk about the effect of the press attacks on his campaign—and about his future plans—to the author, who finds that many in the media are re-assessing their 2000 coverage.

by Evgenia Peretz | October 2007

As he was running for president, Al Gore said he'd invented the Internet; announced that he had personally discovered Love Canal, the most infamous toxic-waste site in the country; and bragged that he and Tipper had been the sole inspiration for the golden couple in Erich Segal's best-selling novel Love Story (made into a hit movie with Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal). He also invented the dog, joked David Letterman, and gave mankind fire.

Could such an obviously intelligent man have been so megalomaniacal and self-deluded to have actually said such things? Well, that's what the news media told us, anyway. And on top of his supposed pomposity and elitism, he was a calculating dork: unable to get dressed in the morning without the advice of a prominent feminist (Naomi Wolf).

Today, by contrast, Gore is "the Goreacle," the elder statesman of global activism, and something of a media darling. He is the Bono of the environment, the Cassandra of Iraq, the star of an Oscar-winning film, and a nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize. To the amusement of his kids, some people now actually consider him cool. "If you had told me 10 years ago that people were going to be appealing to me for tickets to a hot rock concert through my parents, I would have fallen over," says his daughter Karenna Gore Schiff, 34, referring to the Live Earth 24-hour extravaganza in July.

What happened to Gore? The story promoted by much of the media today is that we're looking at a "new Gore," who has undergone a radical transformation since 2000—he is now passionate and honest and devoted to issues he actually cares about. If only the old Gore could have been the new Gore, the pundits say, history might have been different.

But is it really possible for a person—even a Goreacle—to transform himself so radically? There's no doubt that some things have changed about Al Gore since 2000. He has demonstrated inner strength, rising from an excruciating defeat that would have crushed many men. Beyond that, what has changed is that he now speaks directly to the public; he has neither the patience nor the need to go through the media.

Eight years ago, in the bastions of the "liberal media" that were supposed to love Gore—The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, CNN—he was variously described as "repellent," "delusional," a vote-rigger, a man who "lies like a rug," "Pinocchio." Eric Pooley, who covered him for Time magazine, says, "He brought out the creative-writing student in so many reporters.… Everybody kind of let loose on the guy."

How did this happen? Was the right-wing attack machine so effective that it overwhelmed all competing messages? Was Gore's communications team outrageously inept? Were the liberal elite bending over backward to prove they weren't so liberal?

Eight years later, journalists, at the prompting of Vanity Fair, are engaging in some self-examination over how they treated Gore. As for Gore himself, for the first time, in this article, he talks about the 2000 campaign and the effect the press had on him and the election. (In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that my father, Martin Peretz, was his teacher at Harvard and is an ardent, vocal Gore backer. I contributed to his campaign in February 1999. Before reporting this article, however, I'd had maybe two passing exchanges with Gore in my life.) Gore wasn't eager to talk about this. He doesn't blame the media for his loss in 2000. Yet he does believe that his words were distorted and that certain major reporters and outlets were often unfair.

How does he feel about it all? "I feel fine," he says, "but, when I say that, I'm reminded of a story that Cousin Minnie Pearl used to tell about a farmer who was involved in an accident and sued for damages." To paraphrase, at the trial the lawyer for the driver of the other car cross-examined the farmer, saying, "Isn't it true that right after the accident, you said, 'I feel fine'?" The farmer said, "Well, it's not the simple," before going on to explain that the other car rammed into him, throwing both him and his cow from his car. When a highway patrolman came by and saw the cow struggling, he shot him between the eyes. The farmer continued, "The patrolman then came to my side and said, 'How do you feel?'… so I said, 'I feel fine.'"

More HERE (Scroll down to section titled "The Wonk Versus the Frat Boy")
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Linnea
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Post by Linnea » 09-05-2007 02:07 AM

Hi, Joolz. :)

Just reading this Vanity Fair article which I got from another source!

'Things' - are happenin'

Did you read The Assault on Reason yet? I am reading it now...

Prepare to be amazed.
;)

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Post by Joolz » 09-05-2007 02:22 AM

Hi, Linn!

No, unfortunately, I haven't had time to read The Assault on Reason yet. It's next on my list, though. Maybe I can get to it around Christmas time, eh? ;) :D

Yep, things ARE a'happenin'. :cool:
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Post by Joolz » 09-05-2007 03:08 AM

Vanity Fair has done it again, BTW. This is a GREAT article. As so many of us here have said time and time again, one of the major obstacles we face here in America is a corrupt corporate MEDIA that serves us with lies and distortions cloaked as the Truth. This article underscores that sentiment by showing just how self-serving, insincere, inept, and unethical many of the members of our media actually ARE (Ms. Peretz excluded, of course). This combination of a corrupt corporate media hell-bent on serving propaganda to the American people and unethical reporting has been, and is, devastating to our political system.
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Post by Joolz » 09-05-2007 03:29 AM

Another recent article about Gore (actually, an interview with him) I just ran across:

http://www.02138mag.com/magazine/article/1485.html

A couple of quotes from that interview:
You were often referred to as the most powerful vice president.

That was before Dick Cheney.

Point taken. Cheney has made the argument that the vice presidency is not part of the executive branch. Is he right?

(Laughs) Of course the vice presidency is part of the executive branch! But I fear that I’m losing my objectivity where President Bush and Cheney are concerned. Not much surprises me anymore. I have a lot of friends who share the following problem with me: Our sense of outrage is so saturated that when a new outrage occurs, we have to download some existing outrage into an external hard drive in order to make room for a new outrage.
ROFL!!! I love that last comment! I find I have to do that often myself. ;)

And then, there's this:
Before we finish, Vice President Gore, I have to ask one more time: You’re completely ruling out a run for president?

I have not completely ruled out the possibility of reentering politics as a candidate at some point in the future. I doubt that will ever happen. But just as it doesn’t feel right to be a candidate at this point, it doesn’t feel right to make a so-called Sherman statement.
Hmmmmmmmmm... he's still not saying anything definitive as to whether he will or won't... keeping the door open.
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Post by OMG » 09-06-2007 12:17 PM

Joolz wrote: Point taken. Cheney has made the argument that the vice presidency is not part of the executive branch. Is he right?

(Laughs) Of course the vice presidency is part of the executive branch! But I fear that I’m losing my objectivity where President Bush and Cheney are concerned. Not much surprises me anymore. I have a lot of friends who share the following problem with me: Our sense of outrage is so saturated that when a new outrage occurs, we have to download some existing outrage into an external hard drive in order to make room for a new outrage.


I said almost the exact same thing a few weeks/months ago about all the scandals with this adminstration. Every adminstration will have something go wrong or one thing that seems shaddy, especially if you are in there for 8 years. And we comment and point it out and its held against them.

But this adminstration has done so much, constantly! As a individual you become numb to it and that might be there plan.

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Post by Shirleypal » 09-06-2007 04:56 PM

Thanks Joolz's great finds, maybe there is still hope our there for all of us You Go Mr. Gore, We Need You Now More Than Ever.

But this adminstration has done so much, constantly! As a individual you become numb to it and that might be there plan.


OMG I for one am not numb to it and never will be.

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