A CHRONOLOGY OF MEDIA AND GOP DISTORTIONS RE GORE'S LOVE CANAL STATEMENT."In December... the news media generated a small tidal wave of stories about Gore's supposed claim that he discovered the Love Canal toxic waste dump. "I was the one that started it all," he was quoted as saying. This "gaffe" then was used to recycle other situations in which Gore allegedly exaggerated his role or, as some writers put it, "lied."

"But the Love Canal flap started when The Washington Post and The New York Times misquoted Gore on a key point and cropped out the context of another sentence to give readers a false impression of what he meant. The error was then exploited by national Republicans and amplified endlessly by the rest of the news media, even after the Post and Times filed grudging corrections.

"The Love Canal controversy began on Nov. 30 when Gore was speaking to a group of high school students in Concord, N.H. He was exhorting the students to reject cynicism and to recognize that individual citizens can effect important changes. As an example, he cited a high school girl from Toone, Tenn., a town that had experienced problems with toxic waste. She brought the issue to the attention of Gore's congressional office in the late 1970s. "I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing," Gore told the students. "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 that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all." After the hearings, Gore said, "We passed a major national law to clean up hazardous dump sites. And we had new efforts to stop the practices that ended up poisoning water around the country. We've still got work to do. But we made a huge difference. And it all happened because one high school student got involved."

"The context of Gore's comment was clear. What sparked his interest in the toxic-waste issue was the situation in Toone---"that was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all." After learning about the Toone situation, Gore looked for other examples and "found" a similar case at Love Canal. He was not claiming to have been the first one to discover Love Canal, which already had been evacuated. He simply needed other case studies for the hearings.

"The next day, The Washington Post stripped Gore's comments of their context and gave them a negative twist. "Gore boasted about his efforts in Congress 20 years ago to publicize the dangers of toxic waste," the Post reported. "OI found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal,' he said, referring to the Niagara homes evacuated in August 1978 because of chemical contamination. OI had the first hearing on this issue.'... Gore said his efforts made a lasting impact. OI was the one that started it all,' he said." [WP, Dec. 1, 1999] The New York Times ran a slightly less contentious story with the same false quote: "I was the one that started it all."

"The Republican National Committee spotted Gore's alleged boast and was quick to fax around its own take. "Al Gore is simply unbelievable---in the most literal sense of that term," declared Republican National Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson. "It's a pattern of phoniness---and it would be funny if it weren't also a little scary." The GOP release then doctored Gore's quote a bit more. After all, it would be grammatically incorrect to have said, "I was the one that started it all." So, the Republican handout fixed Gore's grammar to say, "I was the one who started it all." In just one day, the key quote had transformed from "that was the one that started it all" to "I was the one that started it all" to "I was the one who started it all."

"Instead of taking the offensive against these misquotes, Gore tried to head off the controversy by clarifying his meaning and apologizing if anyone got the wrong impression. But the fun was just beginning.

"The national pundit shows quickly picked up the story of Gore's new exaggeration. "Let's talk about the Olove' factor here," chortled Chris Matthews of CNBC's "Hardball." "Here's the guy who said he was the character Ryan O'Neal was based on in Love Story.... It seems to me... he's now the guy who created the Love Canal [case]. I mean, isn't this getting ridiculous?... Isn't it getting to be delusionary?" Matthews turned to his baffled guest, Lois Gibbs, the Love Canal resident who is widely credited with bringing the issue to public attention. She sounded confused about why Gore would claim credit for discovering Love Canal, but defended Gore's hard work on the issue. "I actually think he's done a great job," Gibbs said. "I mean, he really did work, when nobody else was working, on trying to define what the hazards were in this country and how to clean it up and helping with the Superfund and other legislation." [CNBC's "Hardball," Dec. 1, 1999]

"The next morning, Post political writer Ceci Connolly highlighted Gore's boast and placed it in his alleged pattern of falsehoods. "Add Love Canal to the list of verbal missteps by Vice President Gore," she wrote. "The man who mistakenly claimed to have inspired the movie Love Story and to have invented the Internet says he didn't quite mean to say he discovered a toxic waste site." [WP, Dec. 2, 1999]

"That night, CNBC's "Hardball" returned to Gore's Love Canal quote by playing the actual clip but altering the context by starting Gore's comments with the words, "I found a little town..." "It reminds me of Snoopy thinking he's the Red Baron," laughed Chris Matthews. "I mean how did he get this idea? Now you've seen Al Gore in action. I know you didn't know that he was the prototype for Ryan O'Neal's character in Love Story or that he invented the Internet. He now is the guy who discovered Love Canal." Matthews compared the vice president to "Zelig," the Woody Allen character whose face appeared at an unlikely procession of historic events. "What is it, the Zelig guy who keeps saying, OI was the main character in Love Story. I invented the Internet. I invented Love Canal." Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, a Bill Bradley supporter, added, "I don't know why he feels that he has to exaggerate and make some of this stuff up."

"The following day, Rupert Murdoch's New York Post elaborated on Gore's pathology of deception. "Again, Al Gore has told a whopper," the Post wrote. "Again, he's been caught red-handed and again, he has been left sputtering and apologizing. This time, he falsely took credit for breaking the Love Canal story.... Yep, another Al Gore bold-faced lie." The editorial continued: "Al Gore appears to have as much difficulty telling the truth as his boss, Bill Clinton. But Gore's lies are not just false, they're outrageously, stupidly false. It's so easy to determine that he's lying, you have to wonder if he wants to be found out. "Does he enjoy the embarrassment? Is he hell-bent on destroying his own campaign?... Of course, if Al Gore is determined to turn himself into a national laughingstock, who are we to stand in his way?"

"On ABC's "This Week" pundit show, there was head-shaking amazement about Gore's supposed Love Canal lie. "Gore, again, revealed his Pinocchio problem," declared former Clinton adviser George Stephanopoulos. "Says he was the model for Love Story, created the Internet. And this time, he sort of discovered Love Canal." A bemused Cokie Roberts chimed in, "Isn't he saying that he really discovered Love Canal when he had hearings on it after people had been evacuated?" "Yeah," added Bill Kristol, editor of Murdoch's Weekly Standard. Kristol then read Gore's supposed quote: "I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. I was the one that started it all." [ABC's "This Week," Dec. 5, 1999]

"The Love Canal controversy soon moved beyond the Washington-New York power axis. On Dec. 6, The Buffalo News ran an editorial entitled, "Al Gore in Fantasyland," that echoed the words of RNC chief Nicholson. It stated, "Never mind that he didn't invent the Internet, serve as the model for Love Story or blow the whistle on Love Canal. All of this would be funny if it weren't so disturbing."

"The next day, the right-wing Washington Times judged Gore crazy. "The real question is how to react to Mr. Gore's increasingly bizarre utterings," the Times wrote. "Webster's New World Dictionary defines Odelusional' thusly: OThe apparent perception, in a nervous or mental disorder, of some thing external that is actually not present... a belief in something that is contrary to fact or reality, resulting from deception, misconception, or a mental disorder.'" The editorial denounced Gore as "a politician who not only manufactures gross, obvious lies about himself and his achievements but appears to actually believe these confabulations." But The Washington Times' own credibility was shaky. For its editorial attack on Gore, the newspaper not only printed the bogus quote, "I was the one that started it all," but attributed the quote to The Associated Press, which had actually quoted Gore correctly, ("That was the one...").

"Yet, while the national media was excoriating Gore, the Concord students who were present for the original quote were learning more than they had expected about how media and politics work in modern America. The students, along with a Website called The Daily Howler, pressed for a correction from The Washington Post and The New York Times. "The part that bugs me is the way they nit pick," said Tara Baker, a Concord High junior. "[But] they should at least get it right." [AP, Dec. 14, 1999] When the David Letterman show made Love Canal the jumping off point for a joke list, "Top 10 Achievements Claimed by Al Gore," the students responded with a press release entitled "Top 10 Reasons Why Many Concord High Students Feel Betrayed by Some of the Media Coverage of Al Gore's Visit to Their School." [Boston Globe, Dec. 26, 1999]

"Finally, on Dec. 7, a week after Gore's comment, the Post published a partial correction, tucked away as the last item in a corrections box. But the Post still misled readers about what Gore actually said. The Post correction read: "In fact, Gore said, OThat was the one that started it all,' referring to the congressional hearings on the subject that he called." The revision again distorted Gore's clear intent by attaching "that" to the wrong antecedent. From the full quote, it's obvious the "that" refers to the Toone toxic waste case, not to Gore's hearings.

"Three days later, The New York Times followed suit with a correction of its own, but again without fully explaining Gore's position. "They fixed how they misquoted him, but they didn't tell the whole story," commented Lindsey Roy, another Concord High junior. While the students voiced disillusionment, the two reporters involved showed no remorse for their mistake. "I really do think that the whole thing has been blown out of proportion," said Katharine Seelye of the Times. "It was one word."

"The Post's Ceci Connolly even defended her inaccurate rendition of Gore's quote as something of a journalistic duty. "We have an obligation to our readers to alert them [that] this [Gore's false boasting] continues to be something of a habit," she said. [AP, Dec. 14, 1999]

"The half-hearted corrections also did not stop newspapers around the country from continuing to use the bogus quote. A Dec. 9 editorial in Pennsylvania's the Lancaster New Era even published the polished misquote that the Republican National Committee had stuck in a press release: "I was the one who started it all." The New Era then went on to psychoanalyze Gore. "Maybe the lying is a symptom of a more deeply-rooted problem: Al Gore doesn't know who he is," the editorial stated. "The vice president is a serial prevaricator."

"In the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, writer Michael Ruby concluded that "the Gore of '99" was full of lies. He "suddenly discovers elastic properties in the truth," Ruby declared. "He invents the Internet, inspires the fictional hero of Love Story, blows the whistle on Love Canal. Except he didn't really do any of those things." [Dec. 12, 1999]

"The National Journal's Stuart Taylor Jr. cited the Love Canal case as proof that President Clinton was a kind of political toxic waste contaminant. The problem was "the Clintonization of Al Gore, who increasingly apes his boss in fictionalizing his life story and mangling the truth for political gain. Gore---self-described inspiration for the novel Love Story, discoverer of Love Canal, co-creator of the Internet," Taylor wrote. [National Journal, Dec. 18, 1999]

"On Dec. 19, GOP chairman Nicholson was back on the offensive. Far from apologizing for the RNC's misquote, Nicholson was reprising the allegations of Gore's falsehoods that had been repeated so often that they had taken on the color of truth: "Remember, too, that this is the same guy who says he invented the Internet, inspired Love Story and discovered Love Canal."

"More than two weeks after the Post correction, the bogus quote was still spreading. The Providence Journal lashed out at Gore in an editorial that reminded readers that Gore had said about Love Canal, "I was the one that started it all." The editorial then turned to the bigger picture: "This is the third time in the last few months that Mr. Gore has made a categorical assertion that is---well, untrue.... There is an audacity about Mr. Gore's howlers that is stunning.... Perhaps it is time to wonder what it is that impels Vice President Gore to make such preposterous claims, time and again." [Providence Journal, Dec. 23, 1999]

"On New Year's Eve, a column in the Washington Times returned again to the theme of Gore's pathological lies. Entitled "Liar, Liar; Gore's Pants on Fire," the column by Jackie Mason and Raoul Felder concluded that "when Al Gore lies, it's without any apparent reason. Mr. Gore had already established his credits on environmental issues, for better or worse, and had even been anointed OMr. Ozone.' So why did he have to tell students in Concord, New Hampshire, OI found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. I had the first hearing on the issue. I was the one that started it all.'" [WT, Dec. 31, 1999]

"The characterization of Gore as a clumsy liar continued into the new year. In The Washington Times, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. put Gore's falsehoods in the context of a sinister strategy: "Deposit so many deceits and falsehoods on the public record that the public and the press simply lose interest in the truth. This, the Democrats thought, was the method behind Mr. Gore's many brilliantly conceived little lies. Except that Mr. Gore's lies are not brilliantly conceived. In fact, they are stupid. He gets caught every time... Just last month, Mr. Gore got caught claiming... to have been the whistle-blower for Odiscovering Love Canal.'" [WT, Jan. 7, 2000]

"It was unclear where Tyrrell got the quote, "discovering Love Canal," since not even the false quotes had put those words in Gore's mouth. But Tyrrell's description of what he perceived as Gore's strategy of flooding the public debate with "deceits and falsehoods" might fit better with what the news media and the Republicans had been doing to Gore." -- Robert Parry

It's pretty clear that Al Gore's newly-reprinted EARTH IN THE BALANCE: ECOLOGY AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT will not get a fair reading by those visiting amazon.com. While the average customer review by this book's 60 reader/reviewers is 3 stars, most of the reviewers either gave the book 5 stars (highest) or 1 star (lowest). Cheek by jowl, one reader calls it "an action-packed intellectual tour de force," while another calls it "garbage." A 5 star reviewer wonders if the 1 star reviewers write bad reviews because of "religious bias," while the next calls it an "alarmist screed [that] ranks at the bottom of the heap." Thus, if you get five 5 star reviews and five 1 star reviews, it all averages out to 3 stars. The real point behind these reviews, of course, is that they're reviews of the presidential candidates, not the book. You'll have to go elsewhere to read an unbiased review of the book, because what these reviews tell us is that amazon.com is able to attract an equal number of biased Democrats and Republicans to its pages. --Politex

see how the other half lives at...

for previous gore headlines, go to...