The two-year trashing of Candidate Gore was one of the most remarkable episodes in American press corps history. The Dem hopeful was battered from stem to stern, in an endless string of invented stories; the situation was so extreme that even Scarborough was willing to flag it. But five years later, your "liberal spokesmen" still refuse to discuss what occurred! Result? Pseudo-con screamers yell things which are false--while "liberals" refuse to respond with the truth! In the past few months, the inanity of this arrangement became all too clear as "liberal spokesmen" kept bungling Rather. The time has come for a frank discussion of how this situation came to pass.

So let's ask it: When Rachel Maddow traveled to Scarborough Country, brought there to debate liberal bias, why didn't she simply state the obvious--that the mainstream press ran wild against Gore, after trashing Clinton before him? In part, as we've mentioned before, she may not even know that this happened, so determined have her colleagues been to cover up for that mainstream press--to cover up for men like Matthews, for the sleazy man who was willing to say that Gore "doesn't look like one of us...doesn't seem very American." Let's face it--so few "liberal spokesmen" have mentioned these outrages that even a bright young talker like Maddow may not be fully aware that they happened. So let's put the Clinton wars to one side and concentrate on the War Against Gore. Why was this outrage so little discussed, even when it was actually happening? Why have few Americans--right to this day--heard about the Washington press corps' long-running War Against Gore?

THE SCRIBE WHO DIDN'T BARK: Let's revisit that remarkable moment on Monday evening's Hardball (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 11/19/02). What made Joe Scarborough's statement so striking? He did what your pundit corps knows it can't do. He said what was blindingly obvious:

SCARBOROUGH: I think, in the 2000 election, I think [the media] were fairly brutal to Al Gore. I think they hit him hard on a lot of things like inventing the Internet and some of those other things, and I think there was a generalization they bought into that, if they had done that to a Republican candidate, I'd be going on your show saying, you know, that they were being biased.

What a slimy man Krauthammer turns out to be! Krauthammer--a former and now misbehaving shrink--thinks Gore's remarks on the press are "loony." What a slimy--and deeply dishonorable--man this Great Pundit turns out to be.
Readers, were Gore's remarks "loony?" A sad cry for help? Yesterday, we linked you to a set of well-known and thoroughly bogus spin-points that came to you straight from the RNC. Today we visit The Mother of All Spins from Campaign 2000--the much-flogged claim that "delusional" Gore said he invented the Internet. That spin anchored the press corps' twenty-month War Against Gore--and the corps got it straight from the RNC. The process was precisely what Gore is describing. But to one slimy man, Gore needs help.

As you will see below, when Gore made his comment about the Internet, no one in the press corps said one word about it. Two news cycles came and went--and no reporter in the country said a word about what Gore had said. The reason? Reporters knew that Gore had been the leader, within the Congress, in developing what we now call the Net. And because your news orgs all knew this fact, no one showed the slightest sign of thinking that Gore had said something unusual. But when the RNC began to peddle that claim, the press corps quickly leaped into action. They called Gore a liar for twenty months--once the RNC put out the line.

A slimy fellow thinks Gore needs help. But it's the American people who really need help, held hostage by spinner/dissemblers like Krauthammer. Do RNC spin-points script the press? Let's take a walk down memory lane. Who invented invented the Internet? It was, of course, the RNC, handing its scripts to the press.

WHAT ARE THE RULES? Are journalists supposed to report real facts? Or are they supposed to dream up Pleasing Group Stories, then invent bogus "facts" to support their sweet tales? Clearly, the press corps took the latter route all through Campaign 2000. Sadly, the rancid "press corps" with which we're now stuck is happiest working from scripts.

Your press corps is happiest working from scripts! In the most insightful column of Campaign 2000, Washington Post ombudsman E. R. Shipp described the phenomenon. Her column--written on March 5, 2000--was titled "Typecasting Candidates." "There is something not quite satisfying about The Post's coverage of the quests of Bill Bradley, George W. Bush, Al Gore and John McCain to become our next president," she began. Deftly, she limned the Post's problem:

SHIPP: [R]eaders react--sometimes in a nonpartisan way, more often not--to roles that The Post seems to have assigned to the actors in this unfolding political drama...As a result of this approach, some candidates are whipping boys; others seem to get a free pass.

According to Shipp, it was less like the Post was reporting the news, and more like the Post was producing a "drama." Each "actor" had been assigned a "role" in the unfolding production. News events were simply made up or reshaped. Shipp specifically scored Ceci Connolly's "Love Canal" story from December 2, 1999. Connolly's work "portrayed Gore as delusional," Shipp wrote, "which fits the role The Post seems to have assigned him in Campaign 2000."

Shipp's column, of course, was completely ignored. But it also was right on the money. Al Gore was delusional. Al Gore was a liar. Al Gore had grown up in a fancy hotel. Inspired by rank dissemblers like Connolly, the corps invented a wide array of scripts, which they slavishly followed through the two-year campaign. With their robotic allegiance to these Official Group Stories, your press corps made an ugly joke out of a White House election.

Who were the great malefactors? We'll look at Chris Matthews on Monday. But citizens need to understand what happened in the 2000 race, and Democrats need to understand the way their party gave up the White House. In particular, Democrats need to understand the remarkable silence of the lambs. Connolly and Matthews helped lead the dissembling, but they were able to do so because others kept quiet. It's time we discussed these silent scribes, and it's well past time that we named them.

What do the press corps' dissemblers do when "good guys" in the corps stand silent? Prepare yourself for some ugly examples as we look back at Matthews next week.

And over the course of the past several years, some also have managed, through various means, to work themselves up over Gore. The current succession of fevered columns, like the one we saw yesterday from the Standard's Matt Rees, are the fruit of a year's solid effort. In his article, Rees assures us that dishonest Gore only "occasionally mentions" something which Gore brings up every time that he speaks. Our standards have fallen when bright scribes like Rees can be writing such absolute twaddle (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 2/16/00).

But the truth is, folks, we have a prejudice here. When we hear the Standard call Gore a liar, we have an instant thought: "Hey! Look who's talking!" Our thoughts drift back to March of last year, when the propaganda campaign against Vile Gore had just lately swung into action. (When did this spin campaign begin? Ten seconds after the impeachment trial ended.) In Iowa, David Yepsen asked Candidate Gore to describe his life experiences outside Washington. Gore mentioned Vietnam service and his career as a journalist. And then he mentioned the fact that he'd spent every summer, as a youth, working hard on the Gores' Tennessee farm.

Thus began one of the most disgraceful episodes in the press corps' recent strange history. The story being faxed from the RNC said Gore had actually lived in a fancy hotel! It was right in the good part of Washington! Reliable spinners jumped into line, eager to push the exciting new story. "Deeply dishonest," Donald Lambro called Gore, in the Times. Michael Medved, in USA Today, said "delusional."

Meanwhile, do these invented stories ever go away? We love you, Arianna, and we've been showing off the autographed book you kindly gave us in Manchester. ("Keep howling," you penned inside. So we will.) It's in friendship we quote from your current column describing Gore's "chronic deception:"

HUFFINGTON: He invented the Internet, discovered Love Canal, and was the inspiration for "Love Story." He lives on a farm, and was always "pro-choice"...

And so on, and so forth. So it now goes when the press corps decides to buy made-up stories.

HOWLER HISTORY--THE DOCTORS WERE IN: Al Gore doesn't know who he is! Pundits began reciting the point at the start of the Naomi Wolf foofaw. In late October 1999, Time reported that Wolf was advising the Gore campaign (she had advised the Clinton campaign four years earlier), and a string of oddball claims were adopted by a gaggle of fist-waving pundits. For example, according to the Standard Account, Wolf had told Gore that he should wear earth-toned clothing. There was no apparent evidence supporting this claim; it had been based on a "speculation" by Ol Reliable, Dick Morris (a "speculation" reported by--who else?--Ceci Connolly) and Wolf had flatly denied the "charge."

No one else ever said it was true. But no matter; the press corps enjoyed the pleasing claim, and pundits quickly adopted the speculation as fact. Many pundits pretended the claim had come from Time, not wanting to cite Morris' "speculation." (For example, Howell Raines attributed this "charge" to Time in a mistaken New York Times editorial. Maureen Dowd also made the false attribution, as did a host of others.) At any rate, the claim was stated again and again, and everyone knew what it meant about Gore--it meant that Gore had hired a woman to show him how to be a man, which proved that Gore doesn't know who he is. Millionaire pundits shuffled into line, eager to recite the new spin-points.

Of course, a comical part of Kristof's piece is its recent discovery of deep concern about the use of that troubling L-word. The delicate scribe is quite concerned about its use in this election. But four years ago, the naughty word was tossed like confetti. Recall, for example, the headline on a June 16, 1999 New York Post editorial. AL GORE, LIAR, the headline screamed. And recall a bit of the political porn the editors peddled that day:

NEW YORK POST (6/16/99): This is hardly the latest of Gore's fibs and flubs. Remember his claim that he and his wife, Tipper, were the models for the couple in Erich Segal's "Love Story"? (Segal said they weren't.) His "memory" of spending his youth on a farm? (The son of a U.S. senator, he was raised in Washington's Fairfax Hotel.) And on "Larry King Live," he said he was instrumental in inventing the Internet. (The Internet was "invented" eight years before Gore entered Congress.)

Yes, that was June 1999--with seventeen months of this clowning ahead. But there you see the Love Story nonsense--the gift of Kristof's own newspaper. (Do facts matter? Segal defended Gore's statements in this flap, although a cleverly couched story by Henneberger, in the Times, made many people think different.) And there you see the screaming nonsense about the farm chores and the fancy hotel. (Gore's statements were perfectly accurate.) And there you see "invented the Internet," being flogged by a gang of eds who lacked the slightest grasp of their subject. (Gore's comment was made to Wolf Blitzer, not King. And the editors put "invented" in quotes, the one word Gore never said.)

Yes, this grinding nonsense was dumped on Gore's head for the full twenty months of the White House campaign, under endless GORE, LIAR headlines. But did the delicate Kristof speak up then, helping us gaze on his fine sensibility? No; his guild was happy with these stupid events. The L-word seemed to be just fine then, when good boys like Kristof knew to keep quiet. (So did scribes who now clog the web.) Only now, a good boy still, does he find that the word is corrupting.
So measure the heft of the delicate boys who make their living in this strange guild. Kristof, by his own account, thinks Bush misstated the nation into war. The run-up to war was "all about" these misstatements. But what has the delicate pundit concerned? He's disturbed by the naughty people who slightly misspeak about Bush's misconduct! He covers his ears when they use that bad word. The E-word would be more correct.