- A recent MSNBC website article casts the Al-Gore-is-a-liar
storyline as a myth kept afloat by the mainstream media. "What the
case represents," wrote David Neiwert, "is actually a breakdown
in basic standards of journalism -- simple factual accuracy -- on a massive
scale." [1]
-
- The Manchester Guardian has called the American media's
treatment of Gore "professional deformation," noting that "the
old standards of checking have lapsed." [2]
-
- Deserved or not, Gore's reputation has recently brought
his claims, even those from decades ago, under intense scrutiny. As with
Bush and other politicians, the list expands when campaign literature is
included, but false statements have been made by Gore himself regarding:
-
- * His marijuana use. * His relationship to the tobacco
industry. * Campaigning more in the South than his combined rivals. * Having
been a "hands-on homebuilder." * Having been a reporter for seven
years. * Half his campaign staff being women.
-
- At least four claims have been confirmed as exaggerations:
-
- * That as a reporter for the Nashville Tennessean, he
"got a bunch of people indicted and sent to jail." (Two councilmen
were indicted, one convicted with a suspended sentence. The Tennessean
reported that Gore did "play a key role in orchestrating a police
sting that led to the indictment.") [3]
-
- * That he co-sponsored of the McCain-Feingold campaign
finance bill. (He co-sponsored numerous campaign-reform bills while in
Congress and supported McCain-Feingold as vice president.)
-
- * That his sister was the Peace Corps' "very first
volunteer." (She volunteered briefly before drawing salary at their
Washington headquarters, and may have been one of the first Peace Corps
"volunteers" -- but only in that unusual sense.) [4]
-
- No Bodyguard in Vietnam
-
- The fourth subject of exaggeration is Vietnam. At various
times, Gore has been quoted as saying, "I took my turn regularly on
the perimeter in these little firebases out in the boonies. Something would
move, we'd fire first and ask questions later." "I was shot at.
I spent most of my time in the field." "I pulled my turn on
the perimeter at night and walked through the elephant grass and I was
fired upon."
-
- Gore did pull guard duty, but not at firebases in the
boonies. [5] He carried an M-16, although it's not clear he actually
fired it. Erroneous reports that he was protected by a "bodyguard"
are traceable to Spec-5 Alan Leo's claim that the commanding officer asked
him to steer Gore away from insecure areas. "Yet there is no evidence,"
Melinda Henneberger wrote in the New York Times, "that Mr. Gore sought
special treatment, or that the extra notice he got anyway provided any
real protection. On the contrary, as an Army journalist, Mr. Gore probably
assumed more risk than he had to, choppering around South Vietnam interviewing
soldiers who had just seen action." Leo also told Henneberger, "that
he had resented Mr. Gore before he ever met him, and changed his routine
only slightly. 'I think he did have the bug, and actually wanted to go
in the field,' Mr. Leo said. 'There was occasional sniper fire when I was
with him, and he took his chances like the rest of us. I guess I still
had that animosity that he probably never had a hard day in his life, but
when other guys would go to the houses of ill repute, he would stay faithful
to his wife and I never saw him treat anyone with disrespect. He wasn't
my slap-on-the-back buddy, but he earned my respect. There were some values
there.'" [6]
-
- Leo told Gore biographer Bill Turque that he doesn't
think Gore was ever aware of the commanding officer's request. [7] And
Henneberger wrote that "Several other soldiers who knew both Mr. Gore
and Mr. Leo in Vietnam said they liked Mr. Leo but either did not believe
him or thought he must have taken a comment like 'Watch his back' a little
too literally." [8]
-
- Jacob Weisberg has observed, "whether or not the
conversation occurred, Gore clearly was not specially protected for much
of the time he was in Vietnam. Journalists in the 20th Engineer Brigade
would often go into the field in pairs on reporting assignments that were
in practice largely voluntary. Gore went on many such trips....And often
he went not with Leo but with other writers and photographers assigned
to the brigade. Leo says he has no reason to believe these other journalists
got the request he did to keep Gore out of danger....O'Hara explained to
him that he would have to choose between hanging around the base in Bien
Hoa in relative safety or venturing out into the field to report on stories....
Gore's decision was to go and see the war for himself, often in O'Hara's
company....But they clearly did expose Gore to hazards he wouldn't have
faced had he stayed back at the base writing up press releases. Riding
on helicopters, sleeping in foxholes within range of North Vietnamese artillery."
[9]
-
- Turque recounts an incident where Gore volunteered for
duty at an airstrip that did take some incoming fire. "William Smith....recalls....when
a sergeant asked him to go to Khe Sanh...to cover the engineers' role in
reopening an abandoned airstrip. When Smith said he was scheduled to leave
for R&R in Hawaii, the sergeant called for volunteers. Gore stepped
up and spent a cold night in a foxhole. 'Al did what everybody else did,'
said Mike O'Hara, the photographer who shot the Khe Sanh assignment. Although
the fire at the airstrip was nearly all outgoing, Gore took no chances,
reinforcing the tarmac covering the foxhole with metal sheets." [10]
-
- Although some of Gore's early Vietnam descriptions were
exaggerated, the "bodyguard" stories are untrue. Gore put himself
at risk and earned the respect of his peers. Moreover, he could have avoided
Vietnam altogether, since the National Guard, George W. Bush's selection,
was available to Gore as well. [11]
-
- (Ironically, George Bush, even in the Guard, did get
special treatment involving light duty his last two years. [12] Moreover,
there is credible evidence Bush was actually AWOL during the final year
or so of his service.) [13]
-
- Memory Not Perfect
-
- As with Bush, some technically false Gore statements
can be attributed to imperfect memory. Where Gore claimed a 1996 Texas
visit with FEMA Director James Witt, campaign staffers confirmed a 1998
visit with FEMA regional director Buddy Young -- easily confused with the
eighteen trips Gore took with Witt. [14]
-
- In their first debate, Gore denied questioning Bush's
experience. The three brief instances that have surfaced where he did
question it -- all roughly six months before the debate -- were not necessarily
instantly recallable under pressure. [15, 16, 17]
-
- Some statements depend on interpretation. That Gore's
union lullaby was a joke ("nobody sings a lullaby to a baby about
the union label") is supported by videotape of his teamster audience
roaring with laughter. His reason for thinking his ideas were used in
Hubert Humphrey's 1968 speech is believable assuming the personality of
presidential candidates can include some grandiosity. [18]
-
- The Breakdown
-
- However, most of Gore's supposed "problems with
the truth" do seem traceable to a "breakdown in basic standards
of journalism":
-
- Alleged Gore fib: That he claimed "to have been
schooled in rural Tennessee and urban Washington, when he was educated
at an elite private school in the capital." [19]
-
- Analysis: This misrepresents Gore's statement. What
Gore actually claimed was true -- that he knew firsthand about the "disparity
between rural and urban education...because he'd attended schools in rural
Tennessee and Washington, D.C." [20] Bob Somerby writes, "But
MacPherson doesn't record Gore saying that he went to school in 'urban
Washington;' and the entire point of Gore's remark was that he had received
advantages at his Washington school that rural kids weren't receiving.
The whole thrust of Gore's remark -- which seems to be entirely factual
-- is reversed in the Globe's current retelling." [21]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: "'I found a little place in upstate
New York called Love Canal. I had the first hearing on that issue'....Gore
said his efforts made a lasting impact. 'I was the one that started it
all.'" [22]
-
- Analysis: Once the Washington Post and the New York Times
published the identical misquotation, "I was the one that started
it all," this one was hard to stop. But a high school class produced
a tape showing Gore was actually giving more credit to the teenage girl
who brought the Toone, Tennessee case to his attention than he was to himself.
After telling her story, he said, "I called for a congressional investigation
and a hearing. I looked around the country for other sites like that. I
found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first
hearing on that issue and Toone, Tennessee - that was the one you didn't
hear of - but that was the one that started it all....And it all happened
because one high school student got involved." [23] Some insist Gore
meant by "found" that he was the first to discover Love Canal.
But cases can be found for a hearing that were originally discovered by
others.
-
- Alleged Gore lie: His mother-in-law and his dog take
the same arthritis medicine, Lodine, but his mother-in-law pays $108 a
month compared to only $37.50 for Shiloh.
-
- Analysis: It would not be surprising if both took the
same drug, although Gore 's staffers never did provide documentary evidence.
The Boston Globe's objection was that, "The Gore campaign admitted
that it lifted those costs not from his family's bills, but from a House
Democratic study, and that Gore misused even those numbers." However,
Gore gained nothing by confusing the numbers, and may not have said his
information came from his mother-in-law. Having seen the study, he could
have assumed it applied to her. The Globe also noted, "Those facts
aside, Gore's overall message was accurate - that many brand-name drugs
that have both human and animal applications are much more expensive for
people than for pets." [24]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: His father was such an unwavering supporter
of civil rights that it cost him his Senate seat.
-
- Analysis: According to the Washington Post, the elder
Gore's opposition to segregation "angered many of his constituents
and eventually led to his political demise. With one notable exception,
when he capitulated to regional sentiment and opposed the 1964 Civil Rights
Act, the choices he made over more than three decades in Washington were
courageous....As Sen. Gore became more outspoken on issues of race and
peace over the next six years, his standing in Tennessee deteriorated,
his liberal positions were portrayed as contrary to the state's values,
and he was defeated in the 1970 election."
-
- Of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, "Memphian Benjamin
Hooks, later executive director of the NAACP, said the vote was regrettable
but 'understandable' as a means of survival...When Al Gore retraced that
same path years later in his own campaigns, he discovered that the Gore
name had an unforgettable resonance in the black community, thanks to his
father." [25]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: His claim that he was "the only
farmer" in the 1988 race.
-
- Analysis: Gore still owns the farm he bought from his
father in the seventies, although he doesn't work it himself. His boyhood
claims to "plowing a steep hillside with a team of mules" and
"clearing three acres of heavily-wooded forest with a double-bladed
axe," though widely cited as "whoppers," have actually been
confirmed. [26]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: His uncle was gassed in WW II
-
- Analysis: A 1959 newspaper obituary for Gore's uncle
corroborates this. [27]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: He was the author of the Earned Income
Tax Credit (EITC) legislation.
-
- Analysis: This is a misrepresentation of Gore's accurate
statement to Time magazine that he was the author (actually the co-author)
of the proposal to expand the EITC. [28]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: That he has always supported Roe v.
Wade, i.e. a woman's right to choose.
-
- Analysis: Gore is telling the truth. What has changed
is that he no longer opposes federal funding for abortion. [29]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: he didn't know the Buddhist Temple
event was a fundraiser.
-
- Analysis: A comprehensive treatment in _The American
Lawyer_ dispels much mythology and appears to vindicate Gore. First, monks
at this temple do not take vows of poverty. And, though candidates can
legally hold fundraisers at temples, in this case they did not. Fundraisers
and community outreach events are both finance-related, but no fundraising
took place that day at the temple -- there were no tickets, campaign materials
or solicitation tables. Early memos allude to a Los Angeles fundraiser
that day, but it was a separate event eventually cancelled. Janet Reno
did not "overrule" most of her advisers in dismissing the case.
There is no evidence Gore or any upper-level campaign staffers knew of
Maria Hsia's illegal activities the day after the event. (In Gore's otherwise
puzzling January 1997 remark, "I did not know that it was a fundraiser,"
the term "fundraiser" presumably refers to these conduit contributions
of Hsia's.) Senator Fred Thompson's Committee on Government Affairs uncovered
no evidence of a campaign deal between the administration and China. [30]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: There is "no controlling authority"
covering his white house phone calls.
-
- Analysis: John B. Judis, fellow at the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars and New Republic senior editor, tells
us, "[T]he [1883] Pendleton Act was not meant to bar federal officials
from telephone solicitations aimed at private individuals. There were no
telephones in the White House then. The act was directed toward federal
employees asking for money on federal premises from subordinate employees
who might fear for their jobs. Thus...Gore...got it right when he said
there was 'no controlling legal authority'.... Senator Fred Thompson's
Committee...acknowledged that the statute didn't apply to Gore's fundraising.
The vice president did not break the law, the report concluded, because
there was no evidence that 'any individuals called by the vice president
were on federal property when they were solicited.'" [31]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: 'I've been a part of the discussions
on the Strategic Petroleum Reserve since the days it was first established.'
-
- Analysis: Critics point out that the Reserve was established
December 22, 1975, two years before Gore went to Congress. Gore's staff
counters that the Reserve's first storage sites were acquired in April
1977, the first oil delivered July 1977. Construction of the first surface
facilities began in June 1978. Gore began serving on the subcommittee
overseeing petroleum policy in early 1977, and subsequently voted for doubling
the Reserve to one billion barrels from its original 500 million. [32]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: He "invented the Internet."
-
- Analysis: Gore's wording made it clear he was not speaking
of a technical feat: "During my service in the United States Congress
I took the initiative in creating the Internet." On May 5, 2000,
columnist Lars Erik Nelson wrote, "This claim is perfectly true."
On August 9, 2000, columnist Richard Cohen wrote, "He did. You can
look it up." A number of those considered to have technically "fathered"
the Internet have confirmed the importance of Gore's role. [33, 34]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: That he and his wife, Tipper, were
models for the main characters in the novel Love Story.
-
- Analysis: Gore actually told reporters he read this
thirty years ago in the Nashville Tennessean. The original article hasn't
been located, but archivists don't think that necessarily means it doesn't
exist. Segal accepts Gore's recollection and considers it was the Tennessean
article that exaggerated the novel's very real connection to Gore. Segal's
protagonist was a composite of Gore and his college roommate, actor Tommy
Lee Jones. But Jenny, the female lead, was not based on Tipper. [35]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: Of Sarasota high school student Kailey
Ellis: "Her science class was supposed to be for 24 students. She
is the 36th student in that classroom, sent me a picture of her in the
classroom. They can't squeeze another desk in for her, so she has to stand
during class."
-
- Analysis: Although Gore was incorrect that Kailey was
still standing, his statement was a perfectly reasonable interpretation
of the September 10 Herald-Tribune article he'd been given the day of the
debate. [36]
-
- Alleged Gore fib: Winifred Skinner "gets a small
pension, but in order to pay for her prescription drug benefits, she has
to go out seven days a week, several hours a day, picking up cans. She
came all the way from Iowa in a Winnebago, with her poodle, in order to
attend here tonight."
-
- Analysis: Republicans smelled a rat in the Winnebago,
which they assumed she owned. And the Washington Post disclosed that Earl
King, Skinner's son, "could easily support his mother. King is an
affluent consultant who works with many of the country's major air-conditioning
companies and lives on an 80-acre ranch, complete with horses." [37]
-
- However, King also said his mother was "poverty-stricken,"
that "he has offered financial support but 'my mother has declined.
She wants her dignity.'"
-
- The Winnebago apparently belongs to the Gore campaign,
not Winifred Skinner. [38]
-
- Is Bush Any Different?
-
- For some reason, it doesn't register with the pundits
that Bush, like Gore and other politicians, makes statements that seem
deliberately false. We know this even without investigative reporters
having sifted through twenty years of public statements in search of discrepancies,
as they have with Gore. [39]
-
- When told that several states prohibit the execution
of mentally retarded convicts, Bush replied, "So do we, in Texas."
In fact, Bush opposed a 1999 bill that attempted to ban such executions,
and it was defeated. During Bush's governorship, African-American Terry
Washington, a mentally retarded victim of fetal-alcohol syndrome, was executed.
[40]
-
- Paul Krugman is not only a New York Times Columnist.
He is also the Ford International Professor of Economics at MIT, and served
as chief international economist of the Council of Economic Advisers under
Ronald Reagan. In 1991, he was given the American Economic Association's
John Bates Clark award for his "significant contribution to economic
knowledge."
-
- Krugman has pointed out that, in his campaign appearances,
Bush routinely "pulls out four dollar bills to represent the projected
budget surplus, then says that he plans to use only one of those bills,
one-quarter of the surplus, for tax cuts. Anyone who has looked at his
campaign's own numbers...knows that this isn't right." Krugman contrasts
this misstatement, which Bush often makes but which the media ignores,
with Gore's one-time Shiloh misstatement, which echoed through the media
for weeks. "Mr. Gore's numbers were off, but the thrust of his story
-- that drug companies engage in price discrimination, charging what the
traffic will bear -- is true. On the other hand, the intended moral of
Mr. Bush's story -- that the budget will easily accommodate his tax cut,
that it leaves plenty of money with which to secure the future of retirees,
rebuild the military, and all that -- isn't at all true.... If this campaign
is about 'real policies for real people,' then we should demand that the
candidates get the really important numbers right." [41]
-
- A week later, Krugman blew another whistle. "Bush's
performance on 'Moneyline' last Wednesday was just mind-blowing. I had
to download a transcript to convince myself that I had really heard him
correctly. It was as if Mr. Bush's aides had prepared him with a memo saying:
'You've said some things on the stump that weren't true. Your mission,
in the few minutes you have, is to repeat all of those things. Don't speak
in generalities -- give specific false numbers. That'll show them!' ....
Is there any way to explain away Mr. Bush's remarks -- three major self-serving
misstatements in the course of only a couple of minutes? Not that I can
see. We're not talking questionable economic analysis here, just facts:
what Mr. Bush said to that national television audience simply wasn't true....I
don't want to keep writing about this. But...someone has to point out that
in an interview intended to showcase his economic program, Mr. Bush did
it again: he vastly exaggerated his spending plans, greatly understated
the cost of his tax cut and misrepresented the issues on Social Security."
[42]
-
- Nor were the debates exempt from such examples. In the
third debate, Bush claimed, "I brought Republicans and Democrats together...in
the state of Texas, to get a patients' bill of rights through." However,
the truth is that this happened despite his opposition. The Boston Globe
reported: "In fact, in 1995 Bush vetoed a patient's bill of rights...that
contained many of the provisions that he praised last night: report cards
on health maintenance organizations, liberal emergency room access, and
the elimination of a gag clause forbidding doctors from telling patients
about more costly treatment options than HMO coverage. At the time, Bush
said these provisions would be too costly to business. Bush did sign some
of the provisions into law two years later. But he opposed the right to
sue HMOs in court....But a bipartisan, veto-proof majority in the Texas
Legislature supported the right to sue. Bush let the provision go into
law without his signature." [43]
-
- In that debate Bush stated his position on vouchers as,
"Vouchers are up to states. If you want to do a voucher program in
Missouri, fine." But the Los Angeles Times explains in detail that
"George W. Bush's plan explicitly mandates that states, whether they
want to or not, help fund the kind of voucher program that is now the top
priority of voucher advocates: one aimed at students from low-income families
in poorly performing public schools." [44]
-
- Historian Sean Wilentz has associated the current Gore
"pseudo-scandal" with Daniel J. Boorstin's "pseudo-event."
"One of the main features of the pseudo-scandal is that it carries
on willy-nilly, impervious to facts," Wilentz observed. "In
the past year, painstaking articles in several publications have exposed
the emptiness of the allegations against Gore. Nonetheless, the charges
linger in the public mind as commonplace knowledge, and the repeated depiction
of Gore as scandal-tainted could prove important, perhaps even decisive,
in November. If it does, it will be the ultimate triumph of the pseudo-scandal."
[45]
-
- A Problem with the Truth - Gore's or the Media's? Keith
Woodard qwoodard@worldnet.att.net
-
-
- From: jr@rense.com X-Sender: sightings@mindspring.com
Date: Tue, 7 Nov 2000 16:39:02 -0800 To: webmaster@rense.com Subject:
SORRY NEW FOOTNOTES Problem with the Truth Gore's or the Media's? - Footnotes
Cc: eotl@west.net
-
- just found these...please exchange existing with these
and confirm that both arrived and got switched
-
-
- Footnotes
-
- 1. David Neiwert, "Al Gore is a liar? That's not
true" http://www.msnbc.com/news/476106.asp?cp1=1
-
- 2. Harold Evans, "No nose for the truth" _The
Guardian_, June 12, 2000 http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4028284,00.html
-
- 3. Bonna M. de la Cruz, "Gore got him in big trouble,
but Haddox is a supporter," Nashville Tennessean, April 16, 2000 http://www.tennessean.com/sii/00/04/16/haddoxmain16.shtml
-
- 4. "Though Nancy was never a Peace Corp volunteer
in the traditional sense (as her brother later described her in speeches),
she did forgo paychecks in the first few months, and often forgot to cash
them when she became a paid staffer." David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima,
_The Prince of Tennessee_, Simon & Schuster, 2000 (Note: the book
citation here is from Bob Somerby at: http://www.dailyhowler.com/h101000_1.shtml
.
-
- I have not personally read the book. One caveat: while
I don't think Gore ever explicitly claimed his sister was a "volunteer
in the traditional sense," I think it's fair to say he left that impression.)
-
- Melinda Henneberger quotes, without comment or contradiction,
Gore's statement that, "'I was blown away by his inaugural address.
I remember so vividly the thick snow on the seats, and listening to each
word bring out such poetic force. Really, it was a remarkable time. My
sister was one of the first volunteers for the Peace Corps that month,
and the whole family was filled with the excitement of the New Frontier.'"
Melinda Henneberger, "AL GORE'S JOURNEY A Boyhood Divided,"
New York Times, May 22, 2000
-
- 5. Bob Zelnick, _Gore: A Political Life_, Regnery Publishing,
1999, p 82
-
- 6. Melinda Henneberger, "Al Gore's Journey Off to
War," New York Times, July 11, 2000 http://www.nytimes.com/library/politics/camp/071100wh-gore.html
-
- 7. Bill Turque, _Inventing Al Gore: a biography_, Houghton
Mifflin Company, 2000
-
- 8. Henneberger, July 11, op. cit.
-
- 9. Jacob Weisberg, "Slander Patrol: Saving Private
Gore?" _Slate_, November 29, http://slate.msn.com/code/BallotBox/BallotBox.asp?Show=11/29/99&idMessage=4078
-
- 10. Turque, op. cit.
-
- 11. According to Henneberger, "Al Gore's military
record is in no particular need of improvement. He was one of only about
a dozen of the 1,115 Harvard graduates in the Class of '69 who went to
Vietnam. And even before enlisting, he passed up a chance to serve in the
National Guard -- the military option chosen by his presidential opponent,
George W. Bush. A cousin of Mr. Gore said she and her then-husband had
secured the promise of a place for him in the Alabama Guard. 'I had friends
who had gone to Vietnam, and one who had come back a paraplegic, and I
was beside myself wanting to keep Al out of there,' said the cousin, Gayle
Byrne, of Birmingham, who grew up near Carthage, Tenn., where the Gores
spent summers on their farm. So Ms. Byrne's former husband, a member of
the Guard, asked a well-placed contact to hold a spot for Mr. Gore. 'When
the word came back that yes, they would hold a slot, we were so excited,'
Ms. Byrne remembered. 'But he said, I appreciate what you've done, but
I just don't believe I can do this.'" Henneberger, July 11, op. cit.
-
- 12. "It is safe to say that Bush did very light
duty in his last two years in the Guard and that his superiors made it
easy for him. The personnel officer in charge of Bush's 147th Fighter
Group, now-retired Col. Rufus G. Martin, says he tried to give Bush a light
load, telling him to apply to the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron in Montgomery,
Ala." George Lardner Jr. and Howard Kurtz, "2 Democrats: Bush
Let Guard Down," Washington Post, November 3, 2000
-
- Web: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4291-2000Nov2.html
-
- 13. Ibid. For this, it is best to read Lardner and Kurtz's
entire article at the above URL. However, here are some highlights:
-
- "Bush says he fulfilled all his obligations as a
pilot in the Air National Guard, but he has had difficulty rebutting charges
that he played hooky for a year....Since 'Lieutenant Bush will not be able
to satisfy his flight requirements with our group,' the unit told him to
report for 'equivalent training' -- such as debriefing pilots -- on the
weekends of Oct. 7-8 and Nov. 4-5, 1972....There is no evidence in his
record that he showed up on either weekend. Friends on the Alabama campaign
say he told them of having to do Guard duty, but the retired general who
commanded the 187th, William Turnipseed, and his personnel chief, Kenneth
K. Lott, say they do not remember Bush ever reporting....Bush's annual
effectiveness report, signed by two superiors, says 'Lt. Bush has not been
observed at this unit during the period of the report,' May 1, 1972, to
April 30, 1973. Hodges also said he did not see Bush at the Texas base
again after Bush left for Montgomery. 'If I had been there on the day[s]
he came out, I would have seen him,' Hodges said."
-
- 14. Terry M. Neal, "Bush Camp Tags Gore as Untrustworthy,
Liberal," Washington Post, October 4, 2000 http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9411-2000Oct4.html
-
- 15. In an interview printed by the New York Times on
March 12, Gore said: "You have to wonder whether [Bush] has the experience
to be president. I mean, you really have to wonder. ... You have to wonder:
Does Governor Bush have the experience to be president? ... Again you have
to wonder: Does George Bush have the experience to be president?"
Katharine Q. Seelye, "Gore Assails Bush on Taxes And Calls Rival Inexperienced,"
New York Times, March 13, 2000
-
- 16. "In any case, Mr. Gore continued his theme
from the morning speech, saying that Mr. Bush's call for a huge tax cut
'raises the question, "Does he have the experience to be president?'"
Katharine Q. Seelye, "Gore Challenges Bush Credibility on Policy Speeches,"
The New York Times, April 13, 2000
-
- 17. "I think it is naive to, and reflects inexperience
to talk about, skipping a whole generation of modernization and asking
our military services to wait while using increasingly obsolete equipment.
I think that view, which has been expressed by some, really reflects inexperience
and naiveté. You just can't skip a generation of modernization without
paying a heavy cost in the form of increased risk in using obsolete technology."
Al Gore, Military Times, April 5, 2000. (Note: This was cited on Usenet.
I have not seen the article.)
-
- 18. "As young Gore later often told the story,
he had been interviewed the day before by Charles Bartlett, the veteran
Chicago Sun-Times columnist from Chattanooga, a family friend who had known
Albert Gore Sr., the senior senator from Tennessee, since his early days
in the House. Bartlett 'had passed the apogee of his career' by 1968 but
was 'still a very eloquent writer,' Gore said, and was one of those helping
Humphrey with his speech at the convention. 'And he came and spent an hour
with me, asking what people my age thought about the war.' As Gore sat
in the convention hall and looked up at Humphrey in the spotlight, he thought
that he heard his own words coming back to him. He was convinced that the
vice president's speechwriters had incorporated his suggestions into the
acceptance speech -- evoking 'the end of an era,' the promise of a 'prompt
end to the war,' the assertion that no one wanted 'a police state,' the
call for 'young Americans . . . to continue as vocal, creative and even
critical participants in the politics of our time.' Hearing those phrases,
Gore said later, led him to the conclusion that 'there was no doubt Mr.
Bartlett had faithfully conveyed some of the feelings that I had tried
to describe.'" David Maraniss and Ellen Nakashima, "Tumultuous
'68 Summer Began Gore's Political Pull," Washington Post, December
27, 1999 http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37508-1999Dec26.html
-
- 19. Text from Walter V. Robinson and Michael Crowley,
"Record shows Gore long embellishing truth," Boston Globe, April
11, 2000
-
- 20. Myra MacPherson, "Al Gore and the window of
certainty," Washington Post, February 2, 1988, citation from: http://www.dailyhowler.com/h051100_1.shtml
. I have not seen the article.
-
- 21. Bob Somerby Bob Somerby, editor of _The Daily Howler_,
has an article at: http://www.dailyhowler.com/h051100_1.shtml
-
- Somerby's devastating critique of Robinson and Crowley
shows them to be part of the "breakdown in basic standards of journalism."
-
- Somerby provides some little-known information about
Gore's school experience in that article.
-
- ----- Begin Somerby -----
-
- Since MacPherson wrote in 1988, biographers and journalists
have frequently described Gore's experience in the Carthage schools. His
second-grade teacher, Eleanor Smotherman, has been quoted in several major
profiles of Gore. In fact, she was quoted by Gail Sheehy in a Vanity Fair
profile right at the time of MacPherson's piece. We're not quite sure how
the Globe missed it:
-
- SHEEHY: He attended the local country school for a few
weeks at the start of every summer and when the folks were away on long
trips, leaving young Al on the farm. Miss Eleanor Smotherman, a dedicated
spinster teacher who to this day brings her own bread into the coffee shop
to be toasted so as to confine her expenses to coffee, had Al Gore in her
second grade class. She set him to tutoring the rural kids, who trucked
in with their runny viruses from hollers that weren't even places, only
near places. [Gail Sheehy, "The Son Also Rises," Vanity Fair,
March 1988]
-
- If Robinson and Crowley missed Sheehy in 1988, they could
have read Alex Jones in 1992. Jones profiled Gore in the New York Times
magazine:
-
- JONES: Despite protestations that his childhood was normal,
Gore seemed to grow up much faster than most of his peers. "When I
talked to him, I almost had to look to see whether I was talking to a child
or an adult," recalled Eleanor Smotherman, Gore's second-grade teacher
in Carthage. [Alex Jones, "Al Gore's Double Life," The New York
Times Magazine, October 25, 1992]
-
- Jones elaborated on Gore's Tennessee experiences, describing
his life when his parents were off campaigning:
-
- JONES: Usually, young Al was left in the care of Alota
and William Thompson, the tenant farmers who ran the Gores' spread outside
Carthage, a small town about 50 miles east of Nashville...[T]he Thompson
home had no indoor plumbing and was heated by a single coal-burning fireplace.
Al shared a bed with the Thompsons' only child, Gordon.
-
- Marjorie Williams expanded this portrait in 1998, writing
in Vanity Fair:
-
- WILLIAMS: [I]n Carthage, "when he was around us,
he never did mention his life in Washington," says Gordon Thompson,
the son of the couple who managed the Gores' farm. "He brought himself
down to our level. Because he knew, to get along with us, he had to."
-
- Gore's parents sometimes left him with the Thompsons
for long periods; when he was in the second grade, he lived with them from
Christmas until the end of the school year, sharing a bed with Gordon.
They were the first of a series of surrogate parents from whom he drew
a needed warmth. [Marjorie Williams, "The Chosen One," Vanity
Fair, February 1998]
-
- ----- End Somerby -----
-
- 22. Text from Ceci Connolly, "Gore Paints Himself
As No Beltway Baby," Washington Post, December 1, 1999
-
- 23. Mike Pride, "OUT HERE: Just One Word,"
Brill's Content, March 2000.
-
- 24. Walter V. Robinson, "Gore misstates facts in
drug-cost pitch," Boston Globe, September 18, 2000; Glen Johnson,
"Prescription story is a pill for Gore," Boston Globe, September
19, 2000
-
- 25. Ellen Nakashima and David Maraniss, "Al Gore
and the Legacy of Race," Washington Post, April 23, 2000
-
- 26. Washington Post: "Here was the farm where his
father taught Al to use an ax, square-bale hay, clear the tobacco patch
and once, in the summer of his fifteenth year, how to plow a slanted hillside
with a team of mules. The stiff preppy Geeing and Hawing his mules? The
very notion has prompted doubts and some ridicule. But his Carthage friends
are puzzled by the skepticism. Steve Armistead, Edd Blair, Goat Thompson,
and Terry Pope all worked alongside Al for several summers. They fooled
around when they could -- filling the cattle trough with cold water and
diving in, driving jalopies wildly down the farm hill, hypnotizing chickens
-- but not when the old man was watching. 'Senior always wanted Al to do
this and do that," recalled Steve Armistead. "His dad really
wanted him to work.' Perhaps there was a long-range political purpose
to Albert's insistence that his son learn the ways of rural life, but the
intent did not seem to be that Al could later use the farm as a convenient
counterpoint to his Ivy League schooling. Gore Senior believed that farm
work was invaluable in and of itself. Pauline later recalled one afternoon
when she and Albert were inside the big house, looking out the picture
window toward the Caney Fork, and there was Al down below, behind the mules,
and the father said contentedly, 'I think a boy, to achieve anything he
wants to achieve, which would include being president of the United States,
oughta be able to run a hillside plow.'" -- David Maraniss and Ellen
Nakashima, "Gore Learns From Father's Life," Washington Post,
October 3, 1999
-
- New York Times: "But in separating the facts from
the fanciful in Mr. Gore's life, perhaps the most striking discovery is
the extent to which the material that is the most widely doubted is also
the most demonstrably true: Al Gore did do a lot of his growing up in Tennessee.
He did work hard on the farm there -- so hard, in fact, that the hired
help felt sorry for him, and thought his father should ease up....In the
same way, some of what is generally assumed about Mr. Gore's life is not
true: he did not, for example, live in luxury back in Washington during
the school year....Mr. Gore's parents were both famously frugal and were
not well off until after their son had grown and after the senator's political
career had ended. Though they sent their children to exclusive schools
and provided such social necessities as ballroom dancing lessons for their
son, they also dressed him in a cousin's hand-me-downs and lived in a hotel
because it was owned by a relative who gave them a break on the rent....Though
his political opponents have successfully portrayed him as a pure-bred
Washington creature, with only photo-op moments in the heartland, he did
have a life there, on the family farm, and by all accounts a more intense
emotional connection to that place than to the nation's capital....Of course,
Mr. Gore is the product of both Washington and Tennessee -- and of the
very fact of having grown up in two places, with two groups of friends
and two ways of looking at the world. He was born in Washington, lived
in Tennessee from the time he was 1 until he was 4, while his father ran
for the Senate, and then moved between the two places until college....
'[Farm work] was expected from the time he was little,' said James Fleming,
a Nashville doctor and friend of Nancy Gore's, who for a time served as
the Gore family physician. It was not so much that the Gores thought cleaning
out barns would add just the right touch of 'log cabin' to his résumé,
family friends said, as that they simply felt it would toughen him up and
give him a proper work ethic....He baled hay, cut tobacco and cleaned out
hog parlors along with the hired help....But the senator also seemed to
revel in assigning his son some of the most backbreaking tasks, like clearing
20 hilly acres with a hand ax....'He'd drive him pretty hard,' said Gordon
Thompson, a friend whose family used to live on the Gore farm, back when
his own father worked for the senator....But then, [Gore Jr.] drove himself
hard, too. Even at 4-H camp, as a 9-year-old, he asked to be given the
heavy-lifting kitchen duty usually reserved for 13- and 14-year-olds. 'He
was the only camper I ever had volunteer for K-P,' said Jerry Cole, the
local 4-H agent." Melinda Henneberger, "AL GORE'S JOURNEY A Boyhood
Divided," New York Times, May 22, 2000
-
- 27. Calvin Woodward, "Gore's embellishments persist,
even in the spotlight," Associated Press, October 6, 2000
-
- 28. Gore: "[Bradley's proposals were] an old-style
approach that spends a lot of money but doesn't have any new ideas. [He
proposes] the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. I was the author
of that proposal. I wrote that, so I say, welcome aboard. That is something
for which I have been the principal proponent for a long time." Karen
Tumulty, Interview with Al Gore, Time magazine, November 1, 1999
-
- "The Gore-Downey bill would aim an additional break
at working families with children who are just above the poverty line by
expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit." Paul Taylor, "Hill Democrats
Unveil Middle-Class Tax Cut Plan," Washington Post, May 7, 1991
-
- 29. Somerby has an extensive treatment at: http://dailyhowler.com/h052200_1.shtml
-
- Corroborating Somerby is the fact that none of the many
Gore critiques I've read on this point produce any statements showing Gore
ever disagreed with Roe v Wade.
-
- 30. Roger Parloff, "Temple In a Teapot," The
American Lawyer, May 31, 2000 http://www.law.com/cgi-bin/gx.cgi/AppLogic+FTContentServer?GXHC_gx_session_id_F
utureTenseContentServer=c511a3ae9203db63&pagename=law/View&c=Article&cid=ZZZ6S5
RQK7C&live=true&cst=1&pc=0&pa=0&s=News&ExpIgnore=true&showsummary=0&useoverride
template=ZZZHCC0Q95C
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- Alternate link:
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