VF on Gore, Bush

Filed under: Al Gore, George Bush — Pieter Dorsman on September 17, 2007 @ 5:17 am CEST

OK, my guilty pleasure this weekend was the new edition of Vanity Fair, which is a must-read for political and culture junkies. There were two very instructive pieces in it this month, the most revealing one no doubt by Evegenia Peretz (yes, Marty’s daughter) piece on how the traditional media (Notably NYT and WaPo) influenced the 2000 campaign. The rightwing blogosphere should take note:

Perhaps reporting in this vein was just too gratifying to the press for it to stop. As Time magazine’s Margaret Carlson admitted to Don Imus at the time, “You can actually disprove some of what Bush is saying if you really get into the weeds and get out your calculator, or look at his record in Texas. But it’s really easy, and it’s fun to disprove Al Gore. As sport, and as our enterprise, Gore coming up with another whopper is greatly entertaining to us.”

A study conducted by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center and the Project for Excellence in Journalism found that 76 percent of stories about Gore in early 2000 focused on either the theme of his alleged lying or that he was marred by scandal, while the most common theme about Bush was that he was “a different kind of Republican.”

The article also reveals that Gore was by far the most serious candidate and the one to be quite uncomfortable hanging around the press corps in a folksy manner. Possibly the fact that he was still Veep at the time played a part in this, but it is also quite plausible that Gore’s character just did not fit into the sort of campaign format that we have become used too. Some journalists may now lament the merciless treatment they meted out to Gore eight years ago.

In same issue - alas not available online - a piece on the bunker mentality that has permeated what is left of the Bush presidency by Todd Purdum. If you wonder why I felt that last week’s speech was ‘2003′ read Purdum’s piece, as it nicely corroborates my argument.

UPDATE: Al Gore picked up an Emmy last night, and no, not for An Inconvenient Truth but for his work for Current TV.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

PoliGazette encourages comments from all viewpoints, especially those that disagree. Comments submitted must, however, adhere to the following standards. Comments that violate these standards may be edited or deleted without notice at the sole discretion of the editors. Commenters who repeatedly or egregiously violate these standards or who attempt to argue publicly with editors regarding the comments policy may be banned from commenting further.

(1) Comments should address the substantive content of the post. Comments that repeatedly or willfully misrepresent the content of the post or of others' comments are not welcome. Comments that respond to something other than which the contributor or commenter may have said are irrelevant and should not be posted.

(2) Comments should avoid use of vulgar language as well as racial, ethnic, or religious slurs.

(3) Comments should not personally attack the character, personal integrity, or professional reputation of any PoliGazette contributor or of other commenters.

(4) Comments should reflect the contributions of the commenters themselves and should not include extensive cut-and-paste reproductions of others' words except insofar as necessary to supplement the commenter's own arguments. Link spam, trackback spam, and propaganda spam will be instantly deleted.

(5) Public figures are considered open to all substantive criticism of their policies and statements. Comments that present false factual information about public figures (i.e. "Obama is a Muslim) or that attack public figures by attacking their families are not welcome. Comments that merely repeat slogans for or against a candidate without engaging in substantive comment are not welcome.

Questions or challenges to these policies or their application should be directed to the editors by email.

1 Michael van der Galiën

September 17, 2007 @ 9:04 am CEST

yes, that was a fascinating article. lets hope they’ll do a better job next time. what I found most worrying about the article by peretz is that journalists seem to think they’ve got every right to behave like they did and write what they did. they seem to believe that it’s perfectly fine for them to dishonestly attack someone just because that person doesn’t enjoy spending time with the press corps (and who can blame him / her?).