Why did the press hate Al Gore in 2000?

[DemocratSinceBirth]

He was earnest. He was a family man...He was everything we purport to want in our leaders and the press pilloried him. From claiming he said he invented the internet, to claiming he said he discovered Love Canal, to claiming he said him and Tipper were the inspiration for the movie Love Story they took an earnest public servant and turned him into a looney tune.


To add insult to injury they stole his knockout victory of George Bush* in their first debate where he wiped the proverbial floor with him by focusing on his "sighs" in the week that followed it...


I don't blame any candidate for avoiding the press... Their concerns aren't ours.

[arcane1]

1. I thought it was the Bush campaign that made all of those claims n/t

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. It was the press that carried his water...

I remember when Bob Shrum was on with Andrea Mitchell the day or so after the first debate and she greeted him with a sigh mocking Gore... i could see the disappointment in Shrummy's face.

[Major Hogwash]

47. Correct if I am wrong, but it was the 2nd debate when Gore did all the sighing.

Gore used facts and figures like a computerized human during the first debate with Dubya, and then someone in Gore's camp must have told Gore that he sounded arrogant for quoting facts and figures like that, so he should "dumb it down" during the 2nd debate.
And that's when Gore did all of the sighing.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

52. ...

http://www.deseretnews.com/top/1015/6/Al-Gore-vs-George-W-Bush-2000-Will-the-first-debate-be-a-game-changer-History-says-not-so-much.html

[dsc]

38. No it wasn't

which is a testimonial to how well the press succeeded.

[joshcryer]

48. Read the Daily Howler.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Howler

It wasn't the claims so much the frequency. It was all day every day bashing.

[arcane1]

49. Ah yes, I'm beginning to remember.

The shit was definitely everywhere.

[AZ Progressive]

2. Look at how they trashed Dean, make no mistake the Corporate Media has a big hand in who wins

[truebluegreen]

5. Yup.

[randys1]

15. Indeed. But I think it also has to do with most real journalists feel an obligation

to talk more to/about the con because they know the rank and file con is a moron.

Said moron needs more of his reps on sunday morning, etc., so said moron can comprehend what is being talked about.

[hifiguy]

4. I have long wondered that myself.

He was a little stiff and stodgy sometimes but those are hardly disqualifiers. And the monkeyman he was running against was a certifiable dingbat.

[truebluegreen]

6. Oh but ever'body wanted to have a beer with Dimson!

He proved that, yes, anyone can be Preznit.
.
.
.
.
.
Well, with a lot of help from Poppy's friends.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

8. The irony is the press wanted an anti-Clinton

When it comes to temperament, demeanor, and countenance Al Gore was his antithesis...

The press said Gore was the Eddie Haskell of the campaign. No that was Bush*...

[hifiguy]

11. Good call.

But Little Boots was nowhere near as smart as Eddie Haskell, who always fooled June Cleaver. For that matter, Little Boots made Lumpy Rutherford look like a Rhodes Scholar and Lumpy was as dumb as a bag of hair.

[JI7]

7. he wasn't one of the "cool kids"

While the media usually sucks when it comes to most democrats with Gore it seemed more personal and more about ridicule .

[Warren DeMontague]

12. It's pretty telling that they thought the squinty, low-valence chucklehead from the GOP

was the "cool" one.

[RobinA]

61. This Particular

"cool kid" is what most of America likes in a cool kid. Gore not only came accross as the guy with the pencil protector, but then tried not to be, which made it worse because he was trying to be this guy's version of cool, which wasn't ever going to work.

In America you don't make fun of the dumb guy, you make fun of the smart guy, especially if he has some obvious mannerisms (sigh). Remember Ah-me-din-a-jad? No bonus points in this country for knowing the hard-to-pronounce foreign leader's name. Better to go nuke-u-lar like the rest of the guys at the local watering hole.

[Warren DeMontague]

9. He sighed.

or something.

[hrmjustin]

13. +1

[One_Life_To_Give]

10. Stiff, not the guy you wanted to have a beer with.

Although I think it was loosing Tenn that cost him the election. He always had that look like an actor on stage. The movements etc. just didn't flow well. And that hurt him.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. I actually met Al and Tipper...He seemed warm enough...

Yeah, Bush* looks like a guy you would have a beer with, until he goosed the waitress and got you both thrown out of the bar.

[rock]

16. "... by focusing on his 'sighs' ... "

Just suppose the press had tried this with Joe Biden when he laughed out loud at Paul Ryane would have laughed out loud and the press and spanked their butts. But the press realized that Gore was a gentleman and used that against him. He in fact didn't owe anybody an apology. w* was a laughable idiot.

[Jackpine Radical]

17. The story at the time was simply that the press corps didn't like or trust Gore,

while Bush clowned around with them, gave them special little names, etc.

I always thought that story was bullshit.

I think Gore went down because they had orders to take him down, just like they did Dean right after he talked about breaking up the media empires. Only in Gore's case it was his environmentalism and resistance to the planned war in Iraq that put him in their crosshairs.

[hifiguy]

20. I think you are on to something there.

That sounds far more than plausible, and highly probable.

[Dont call me Shirley]

39. In agreement

[DemocratSinceBirth]

53. Assigning people nicknames is a way of asserting superiority over them./NT

[Jackpine Radical]

54. On a par with wiping your glasses on someone's clothes.

I'd have probably given him a nickname of my choosing in return. "Chimpy" sounds about right. I guess that's why nobody ever puts me into situations like that.

[Hekate]

18. Hm. First Rec. You make a very good point. There's VERY GOOD REASONS for Hillary to avoid...

...those sharks, who are only looking for chum in the water. The MSM was beyond bad with Al Gore; to say they did not do their due diligence with Bush or Florida is an understatement of coup d'etat proportions. The MSM actively destroyed Howard Dean, playing the Dean Scream over 600 times in the next several days (I have a friend who was in the room with him, and it was so noisy you couldn't hear yourself think, much less hear Dean trying to rally the troops. The TV cams had directional mikes trained on him to exclude the crowd noise).

[elleng]

29. Exactly, the 'scream' WASN'T!

[underpants]

19. Gore had the potential to stop the money to rip everyone off

Follow the money

[grasswire]

21. Part of the blame goes to ABC and "The Note"...

....a daily media blog that "nannyed" the Washington Press Corps, telling them what to think and write. Mark Halprin wrote "The Note." I railed about it back then.

[MaggieD]

22. Spot on

The press is only useful to a candidate to improve name recognition. Campaign events take care of the rest. HRC knows the average voter has no use for the press, and she has no need to give them anything.

[cali]

33. So why does David Axelrod say she's making a huge mistake? Ignorant?

republican mole? do tell, Mags.

[MaggieD]

37. Probably because he works for the media

Not too hard to figure that one out.

[cali]

44. again

Hahaha. Excuses, excuses.mags.

[MoonRiver]

23. It was completely disgusting to behold.

I don't know why, when they idolized Obama, but I guess they just didn't "like" Gore.

[Metric System]

24. Something about earth tones. I don't know. It was all so ridiculous.

[Major Hogwash]

25. Do you remember the poster Madhound?

Whatever happened to him?
He used to defend Nader at DU like he was his best friend.

[MaggieD]

43. Nader doesn't have a best friend

Unless he has a dog. Even his own staff ended up loathing him. He could have gone to safe blue states to convince people it was safe to waste a vote on him to get to the 5% the Greens needed to get public funding in future elections. He fucked them over and went to swings states instead, where the sell was much harder.

[Major Hogwash]

45. Yet, Madhound was a troll who posted here for over 10 years, defending Nader.

I don't know how he survived for so long, or what eventually lead to his being banned, but his banning was about 9 years too late for me.

I couldn't understand why Madhound defended Nader the way he did.
His arguments were completely illogical, yet when I disagreed with him, my posts were deleted.
I didn't understand why my responses were deleted since I didn't go over the top or call him names.

Nader couldn't even raise enough money to run again by himself, so the Republicans put the money up for him in 2008.
That's well documented.

[valerief]

26. Billionaires own the press. Bush promised to make them $$$. nt

[JHB]

36. Not just billionaires. Just about all of the "reporters" we're talking about....

...in this thread make enough that Bush's tax cuts lopped thousands to tens-of-thousands directly off their tax bills. And that's just counting straight income, not even getting into investment/Capitol gains income.

Shrub wasn't just a "have a beer with" guy, he was the "have a beer with" guy who was going to hand them a big bag of money.

That part played into it too.

(Plus, it's not as if any of them had gotten fired for low-quality reporting during the scandal-mongering/manufacturing of the Republicans.

[elleng]

27. and also there's Dean's 'scream,'

which wasn't! RIGHT, their concerns aren't ours.

[rufus dog]

28. This will be a Sanders strong point IMO

They will go after him with gusto..... And he won't care and won't change.

[CincyDem]

30. I think this was the front end of demonizing intelligence

I think 2000 was the year that we decided we would rather had a guy with the dunce cap (who was more like "us&quot than the smart guy. We were tired of revenge of the nerds and this was the start of the "un-intelligencia" starting to take over. Gore represented the smart guys and media like FOX made sure we knew that they were the problem.

In 1980 with Ray-gun, we started hiring leaders who hated government. In 2000 we started hiring puppets (at least for 8 years).

Anyway - my 2 cents.

[cali]

31. He was smug. He was ponderous. He came off as superior and arrogant

Look, I voted for Gore enthusiastically, but it's all in the eye of the beholder. I have a vivid memory of watching the debate where he rolled his eyes, with 12 other Gore supporters and we all just groaned.

[Punkingal]

55. Gore was my Congressman....I lived 35 miles from his hometown

and one on one he is very warm and not at all arrogant or smug. It is a shame he was perceived that way, but I saw it, too. I just knew that was nerves or something. He is a good man.

[BeyondGeography]

32. Dingell Norwood!

[Vattel]

34. They have a lot of power, and they abused that power by unfairly

painting Gore as a habitual liar. Even liberal pundits at the NY Times and Washington Post took part in it. Why did they do it? I am not sure. Maybe they just thought it was a good story and didn't carefully evaluate the facts. Or maybe they just didn't like Gore on a visceral level. They don't always favor the Republican though.

I think Obama got better treatment than McCain in 2008. I do think McCain stupidly started complaining about the press early on and that may have turned the press against him. I am glad he did, though, because McCain would have been a disaster.

[yeoman6987]

50. Thank god he picked Sarah Palin

That caused a ton of moderate republicans to. It's for president Obama. He might have won anyway but McCain helped.

[FlatBaroque]

35. Because he MAY not have gone along the plans of our overlords

to attack Iraq and destabilize the middle east. Bush most certainly would have and did.


EDIT: He might also have prevented 9/11; so he could not be allowed to become the President.

[rug]

40. "earth tones"

[LiberalEsto]

41. Because they were ordered to hate him. nt

[TheKentuckian]

42. His entertainment value was too low, few would turn the channel to watch Al.

Utterly non controversial, avoided drawing contrast, stiff, few jokes or laughs, monotone, competent, essentially a "made guy" being white, wealthy, and of proper breeding, detailed wonky responses to start.

I think (and the same goes for Kerry really) that they in no small measure had no interest in covering him for 4-8 years. No scandals, shenanigans, or reason to expect serious and protracted conflict over anything but climate change (more boring more science and stuff, like gag me with a spoon).

I believe marching orders from on high weighed more heavily of course but I credit much of the across the board gusto to be the petty millimeter deep entertainment value stuff.

The least boring nominee has won everytime like clockwork since at least Nixon.

Nobody losses because they are too anything but dull and/or mealy mouthed.

Gore still won of course but the race isn't close if he didn't make too many think of the guy people avoid inviting to parties but if he cates wind he can come and is assigned a task and/or didn't get Joementum.

A little personality and no Loserman turn that tight race into a fucking asswhoppin.

[Stallion]

46. I Have No Problem Stating I Thought Gore Was a Poor Candidate (Intangibles)

a lot worse than he was when running for VP. I was proud to vote for him on the issues but he did lose the touch. He was stiff, uninspiring and looked like he ate at too many Washington insider functions. That's how many Americans make up their mind. I mean you have to be pretty damn bad to lose that election-and he was

[ZX86]

51. Because the fix is in.

The corporate press stopped being journalists decades ago. The examples are endless.

Dukakis wearing a helmet.

Asking Dukakis a death penalty question in the form of a rape fantasy of his wife.

Whitewater to Christmas Cardgate.

All things Ken Starr.

Gore sighing.

Asking Kucinich a UFO question.

The Dean scream.

Terrorist fist bumps.

The list goes on and on. Nothing that affects Americans in any real or substantive way. Nothing but salacious gossip. These are not journalists engaging in the sacred duty of protecting the public good. While bin Laden was plotting 9/11 the press was consumed with oral sex. A prostitute sat among the highest paid reporters on the planet in the White House briefing room none of them had a clue. Let that sink in for a moment. A room full of the most elite, highest paid reporters in the history of forever and they can't spot a rank amateur who took a weekend seminar in journalism is working among them. It would be like taking a weekend course on violin playing and joining the symphony.

They are nothing but a horde of narcissistic, opportunistic, wanna be celebrity divas who do what they are told by their corporate masters. They would hit their own mother over the head with a snow shovel if they thought it would get them their name on a make up chair or a parking space. Any pretense of journalistic ethics or standards went out the window years ago. They are less than worthless.

[deutsey]

59. Yes...I think there's more evidence that Bigfoot exists

than there is supporting that "the liberal media" does.

Our news/entertainment media are owned by a very small group of people, and I can't think of one of them who belongs to a Marxist collective. They are part of huge corporate conglomerates driven by making money and social control, both of which support the conservative worldview of the owners and their class.

Anyone who works for these conglomerates as a "journalist" knows which way the wind blows from on high and most seem to have no problem selling their soul for the limelight and paycheck.

[freshwest]

56. His books truly threatened the power system to the core:

Last edited Tue May 19, 2015, 11:57 PM - Edit history (1)

Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit

by Al Gore

Energy & Oil


The effects of global warming on polar ice are significant.
Global warming is a strategic threat.
Global Marshall Plan must include the First and Third worlds.
Global Marshall Plan: Five strategic goals.
Global Warming is a clear & present threat; but preventable.
Kyoto goals are an indispensable first step.

Environment

Our beaches mirror the degradation of the environment.
America is not responding to environmental danger signals.
Half of all American waters are polluted.
If we do nothing else, save the rain forest.
Americans generate too much waste.
Industrialism has led to tremendous waste and pollution.
In the U.S., chemicals constitute most hazardous waste.
The US should lead the global environmental movement.
Environmentalism can only thrive where democracy thrives.
Calculate environmental impact when measuring profit.
Economics does not account for the cost of consumption.
Internal combustion engines interfere with earth’s cleansing.
Civilization and the earth are increasingly in conflict.
The world must unite to save the environment.
Every individual should take responsibility for the earth.
A balance between civilization and the earth is needed.
Welcomes criticism as “too environmental”.
Ozone protection is working; keep up diligence.
Big Lie: good environment is bad economics.
Strengthen CAA; polluters pay for air cleanup.
Replacing internal combustion is possible & will create jobs.

Government Reform

Politicians address immediate problems, not long-term ones.
Our leaders are ignoring the threat to the environment.
Polls and technology dominate politics, not substance.

Immigration

Global warming will cause Third World flight to the West.

Jobs

More bio-energy means less greenhouse emissions & more jobs.

Principles & Values

Earth in the Balance is a call to action and hope.

Technology

Promote $500B market for energy technology

http://www.issues2000.org/Earth_in_the_Balance.htm

THIS HAS ALL COME TO PASS.

More of the Gore Victory:

http://www.makethemaccountable.com/coverup/

Particularly this page:

THE MEDIA COVER-UP OF THE GORE VICTORY PART FIVE: ANSWERING THE SKEPTICS

http://www.makethemaccountable.com/coverup/Part_05.htm

[freshwest]

57. There were claims widely promoted that Gore was anti-Christian as RWNJs say all Democrats are:

Snopes posted the claim, which is not true, and explains why it isn't:

Page 342 is part of a chapter entitled "A Global Marshall Plan" and contains a discussion about publicizing the acts of companies that violate environmental rules in order to put
public pressure on them to change their ways. The only reference to religion in the entire chapter is a (supportive) paragraph about the Catholic church and contraception on page 316.

Religion in general and Christianity specifically are touched upon in Chapter 13, "Environmentalism of the Spirit," but those passages are a defense against those who charge that Judeo-Christianity's conception of humankind as having "dominion" over the earth inspires "an arrogant and reckless attitude towards nature." A paragraph on page 263 is critical of some Christians whose "prophetic vision of the apocalypse is used as an excuse for abdicating their responsibility to be good stewards of God's creation."

http://www.issues2000.org/Earth_in_the_Balance.htm

http://www.snopes.com/language/document/earthbalance.asp

[Jeffersons Ghost]

58. It's because, although he allegedly inveted I.T. he mispronouced "internets" according to "W"

allegedly

[NCTraveler]

60. Right wingers have no sense.

Hillary just displayed her leadership with this one. She had the low info crew going nuts. Meanwhile, she becomes more popular as they look like fools. I love how easily she leads them around like children.

[Orrex]

62. Maureen Dowd, for instance, attacked him for being effeminate

Still makes me cringe every time she's linked or cited here on DU.