Vanity Fair has a new navel-gazer where they re-examine the coverage of Algore in the run-up to the 2000 election and start the newest legend, that the press was too hard on him, made up and exaggerated stories, and basically sand-bagged him.
Its almost like a case of ‘the facts are wrong but the narrative is correct’ that the left loves. No, Gore didn’t actually say he “invented” the internet, but he did in so many words try to take credit for it, by VF’s own new reporting.
And he did say, incorrectly, that he and Tipper were the inspiration for Love Story, but now its fashioned that it was a throw-away remark that was blown out of proportion as a calculated ploy.
Its part of the rehabilitation of Gore’s rep, in case Hillary! falls apart and they need him to beat Guiliani. In fact, I’m sure every Dem is nervous about the fact Hillary! seems unbeatable, and yet is unwinnable, and will drag the down-ticket candidates into her nightmare. Hence the re-telling of the Gorestory, and the new claim that he only lost because the left wing media smeared him. He’s really a great guy and would have made a wonderful president, I guess we’re supposed to believe.
Well, color me unconvinced. Almost everything Albert Gore Jr. said and did from the time he was in politics (if not before) is calculated for effect. Also, the American public has a wonderful way of sifting through all the media bullshit, and that’s what all this is, and Vanity Fair is as big a shit shoveler as any lefty rag. People in the US hear it all, watch the guy actually speak and make their decision.
I’d have to say, its rare any person, politician or not, who gets as much exposure as Gore, or George Bush, or Kerry, or Reagan, or whoever, can be falsely painted. The media can keep saying Bush is stupid Bush is stupid Bush is stupid like a mantra, but the US voters still elected him twice (yes, twice, live with it, leftoids).
The shit was hurled, but it didn’t stick. On Gore, it did. And it did because even if the internet and the Love Story thing, to which VF gives waaaaaaaay too much credit, weren’t true, they were typical of the pompous bragging prig Gore was and is.
While on the subject, it talks about Gore rising above the 2000 election. That’s more bull. He’s whined about it constantly. He’s still whining about it. He never shuts up about it, in fact. He even goes on and on about how he’s over it, when he’s obviously not over it at all.
Speaking of media myths, that’s one VF would like to keep alive: GW Bush was ‘selected’ not elected. He won the most electoral votes. He won a recount in Florida. He won a 2nd recount. That was enough. More recounts were leading to chicanery and vote inventing by Democrats who were handling the cards, poking out chads and guessing voter intent.
The Supreme Court put a stop to the monkey-show. In the following years, a consortium of newspapers did an in-depth recount. Bush still won, by almost every conceivable method of vote-counting, except one intermediate method of voter intent ESP.
The facts are, there are 50 different (plus D.C. and other U.S. territories who vote) sets of rules about how elections are held for president. Florida followed the one prescribed by Florida law. You go in with a certain set of rules, you run by them, you win or lose by them. Gore wanted to run by one set (he figured he would lose the popular but win the electoral) and when he got upset, he wanted to have a 2nd bite at the apple.
He single-handedly did more damage to the U.S. democracy, and faith in voting, than any other person ever. For that alone he should be seen for what he is: a demagoguing, immature, unserious, unfit to be president, scolding, lecturing, hectoring, pedantic pathetic figure.
Vanity Fair may be right that those couple stories were ramped up and caused Gore some traction, but he himself far outdid those little fables with his own actions, before and after the election. We can only be grateful that the voters saw through the big phony so that George W. Bush was in charge on 9.11 and not Albert Gore Jr.
Finally, I love how the left, including Hollywood and ‘rock world’, all lock-step lefties who adore Gore, conveniently forget Tipper Gore and her crusade against rock music, violent video games and movies. The Republicans get all this rap for being censors and moralistic, but it was Tipper who led that fight. I vividly remember the hearings.
I’m a big Zappa fan, but those were not his best moments, he gave a really lame presentation. I think I gave him way too much credit, due to the intelligence of his composing, for being very sharp. Apparently his intellect other than music more closely matched his lyrics, which were frequently moronic. I always thought ironically so, but those hearings made me re-evaluate.