Robert Parry: The New Assault on Al Gore

[babylonsister]

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/060507.html

The New Assault on Al Gore
By Robert Parry
June 5, 2007


snip//

By manipulating how key insiders saw things, the neocons knew they could influence the broader public that would read opinion columns and listen to many of the same pundits reprising their opinions on TV talk shows.

Before long those prevailing Washington opinions would solidify into conventional wisdom and filter down to a broader spectrum of Americans who thought they were in the know because they kept up with the news and tuned in the pundit shows.

By Campaign 2000, this process had grown so immune from normal journalistic standards that political reporters felt no inhibitions from the traditional rules of objectivity to refrain from mocking Al Gore and even falsifying his comments.

At an early Democratic debate between Gore and his rival, Sen. Bill Bradley, the campaign press corps watching on a closed-circuit television collectively groaned and hooted when Gore spoke.

Though U.S. history was at a crucial juncture in 2000, the Washington press – led by print reporters more than their TV counterparts – transformed Gore into an unappealing caricature as a lying braggart. Simultaneously, most journalists depicted George W. Bush sympathetically as a natural leader and a straight shooter, albeit a bit inarticulate.

Without this pervasive media hostility toward Gore and fondness for Bush, it’s hard to imagine that Bush could have crept so close in the election that his powerful allies could award him the White House despite Gore winning the national popular vote.

more...

[DURHAM D]

1. For this reason I think if Gore decides to run he should

start by picking a fight with the media. Take them on straight up. Every time they tell a lie about him he should address it - call them out by name. The media should be his enemy and should be the focus of his opposition research. He can campaign on the issues after he has taken them out of the mix.

The script on him was written years ago and is currently being updated by Rove and the RNC and passed to their tools - the msm. If he can't change that dynamic he doesn't need to run at all. I personally think the general public is finally ready for this fight.

[babylonsister]

2. All the Dems need to start defending themselves and point out all

the lies that have been told imo; maybe that will make it stop.

[Just-plain-Kathy]

3. I wish Dems would start spending their “Campaign War Chests” on ads to spread the truth.

If they did that, they’d make back the money and then some.

[ladym55]

4. What snarkitude

I am so sorry that Al Gore has a brain and can present a coherent argument. :sarcasm:

Things are going SO WELL with the durrent leadership!!! Ask me how tired I am of snarky commentaries by lazy reporters who are too dumb and too lazy to their job. :grr:

[Uncle Joe]

5. I'm firmly convinced the primary reason, the MCM trashed and slandered Al Gore is

precisely because he empowered the people when he championed the internet. These people have lived in their own bubble or ivory tower for so long, the unwashed masses are just that. Dana Milbank's open disdain for the American People comes through in his evaluation of The "Assault on Reason" below.

"But Milbank, like many Washington insiders, sees average Americans as stupid know-nothings who would be offended by know-it-all Gore.

“Imagine the Iowa hog farmer cracking open Assault on Reason, and meeting Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Paine, John Kenneth Galbraith, Walter Lippmann, Johannes Gutenberg, John Stuart Mill, Thomas Jefferson and Marshall McLuhan – all before finishing the introduction,” Milbank wrote.

In that line, Milbank reflected the elitist disdain toward the “Iowa hog farmer” and other common folk. But who knows? Maybe the great unwashed masses are smart enough to find Gore’s commentaries not only reasonable and engaging but respectful of their own intellects, that Gore is speaking up to them, not down to them."


I believe the American People will be much better off when they realize, the slandering of one, is the slandering of all, even more so when the one was slandered for empowering the all.

[anitar1]

6. Thanks, Uncle Joe. Milbank is a mean little

man and it shines through at times, imho. But he is just one of many who need to be slapped.

[Uncle Joe]

7. Thank you anitar and I totally agree. n/t