Letters to the Editor
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Fashion Victims
The media become fashion victims. It is apparent that certain ideas get picked up, repeated, and fused into a fashionable cliche that the public is fed in dose after dose until we unwashed begin to believe the distortions and prejudices. This is the way it is for Al Gore. Certain media people (even so-called liberals)are still painting him as clumsy, unfashionable, vocally unfacile, a prevaricator of sorts and generally inept at attracting crowds through speeches. It is incredible that a man who jumped out there with the truth at the beginning of the Iraq debacle, a man who has fought for the environment and has taken unequivocal stands on numerous hot subjects could be so maligned.
I like him...always did...and have never found him to fit the media painted picture. Not only that, Al Gore received the majority popular vote in 2000. He is easy to like; he is a winner!
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Al is an inspiration
Save the planet-- re-elect Al Gore!
I hope he ignores the gratuitous insults aimed at him from the media.
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Mr. O'Hehir brings a can of gas to put out the fire.
"I said the thing about the accent because his accent sounds stronger to me now than during his White House years. He has lived kind of a schizophrenic existence, and of course I don't know that he's consciously putting it on. I doubt it, actually. But he is a politician, and like all politicians has a certain chameleonic ability to appear in different ways to different audiences at different times. His current, stronger accent fits the folksy new Al."
Let's take that paragraph apart. First, you say that you "said the thing about the accent" because, to you, Gore's accent seems stronger now than when he was in the White House. Only thing is, that isn't what you wrote in your review. You wrote that Gore's accent was a "put-on" by a man who is apparently "strange." Did you ever stop to consider the fact that Gore now makes his primary home in Tennessee? Did you stop to think that perhaps being back home where people actually do speak that way might have some effect on Gore's speech? I guess not.
Second, you tell us that Gore has "lived kind of a schizophrenic existence." What exactly is that supposed to mean? What evidence is there for this schizophrenia? Unless you're taking your cues from Maureen Dowd, Ceci Connelly, Candi Crowley and RNC blast faxes circa 1999-2000, I don't think you can point to any schizophrenia on the part of Gore outside of the fevered immaginations of a hopelessly incompetent media. So basically what you seem to be doing here is picking up on old, tired, inaccurate and baseless memes because...why? Maybe it's just too easy to parrot these things. Maybe it's laziness. Whatever else it is, accurate and informed it is not.
Third, you say "I don't know that he's consciously putting it on." Did you ever stop to consider that it isn't a "put-on" (see synonyms at imitated, pretended, feigned, insincere and phony) at all? Again, there is no basis for the "put-on" remark at all other than perhaps the lazy desire to conform to established (dishonest) media memes.
Finally, you write "His current, stronger accent fits the folksy new Al." Cluestick for Mr. O'Hehir: People that know Gore have told us repeatedly that the Al Gore you see these days is the "real Al Gore" and that the caricature created by the media (lapping it up from years of RNC blast faxes) is the inaccurate portrayal.
Mr. O'Hehir, I think that you and Ms. Walsh would both be well served to be more open about the criticism that has been expressed. The fact is that you did drop a turd of a sentence into your review and it made concentrating on much else impossible for many who read it. Your defensiveness is akin to a restaurant manager trying to say "But it was mostly good, wasn't it?" to a diner who's just finished most of a plate of pasta and discovered to their horror a dead cockroach buried under the last bites of their entrée.
When you can point to some actual proof that Al Gore's authentic Tennessee accent is a "put-on" or that his life has been lived in some sort of "schizophrenic existence", please let us know. Until then, don't be so goddamned lazy as to repeat bogus media memes and don't be so blissfully ignorant of the kind of reaction to be expected from your readers when you fail in that regard.
Salon, for an online publication, sure seems to react badly when they get the sort of instant feedback that being an online publication makes possible. The defensiveness of Ms. Walsh and Mr. O'Hehir remind me at least a bit of the current WaPo ombudsman who just also just couldn't quite understand the vehement reaction to her claim that the Abramoff scandals were "bi-partisan" and thet Abramoff gave money to Democrats as well as Republicans. She was as wrong there as you are here.
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there is more than a whiff of "when did you stop beating your wife" in these "seaching" articles
and more than a touch of irony/hypocracy ... when you consider Bill Clinton's post-impeachment popularity (even as he was admitting he had been less than truthful publically and privately and under oath) and George Bush's less than secret dissipated "youth" ... religious conversion not-withstanding ...
It's really pathetic that Al Gore (and -- to a lesser degree but similarly -- John Kerry) can be besmirched so effectively ... and this "feet of clay" "fall from grace" was not "earned" or "uncovered"... it was planned and orchestrated (Karl Rove and ilk take your bow) ...
I won't belabor this further ... except that both Al Gore and John Kerry were both "robbed" of their historical contributions to this country, their well-earned respect and dignity and, likely, of the presidency ...like many others, I really don't want to see a three-peat in which character assasination succeeds in AGAIN delivering a GOP victory.
I'm not asking for reverence or whitewash ... but some serious apprection of these casually false bon mots of "conentional wisdom" and oft-repeated lazy memes might be a place to start ... there's little that more important than the next two election cycles ... it's not a joke, y'know?