Wash. Post ignored own role in creating false Love Canal story about Gore
SUMMARY: The Washington Post asserted that "Republicans tarred [Al Gore] in 2000 as someone who claimed to have discovered the Love Canal disaster and invented the Internet." But the Post did not note that the Love Canal smear was based on a falsehood originating in The New York Times and The Washington Post itself, nor did it note that Gore never claimed to have "invented the Internet."
In a May 28 Washington Post article, staff writer Jonathan Weisman asserted that "Republicans tarred [Al Gore] in 2000 as someone who claimed to have discovered the Love Canal disaster and invented the Internet." But Weisman did not note that the Love Canal smear was based on a falsehood originating in The New York Times and The Washington Post itself. First, the paper ran articles on December 1 and 2, 1999, misquoting Gore then the Post waited until December 7 to issue a correction, even though video of Gore's comments was available at least by the evening of December 1, 1999. Additionally, Weisman also ignored the Post's role in perpetuating the myth that Gore said he invented the Internet.
As Media Matters for America noted, on February 17, 2000, Slate.com editor-at-large Jack Shafer wrote that New York Times reporter Katharine Q. "Kit" Seelye and Washington Post staff writer Ceci Connolly were responsible for creating the false Love Canal story: "[I]t's Seelye's fault -- and the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly's -- that folks think Gore claimed credit for Love Canal in the first place. Which he didn't" [emphasis in original].
Connolly wrote in a December 1, 1999, article that Gore said, "I was the one that started it all":
Speaking later at Concord High School, Gore boasted about his efforts in Congress 20 years ago to publicize the dangers of toxic waste.
"I 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. "I had the first hearing on that issue."
Gore said he first became aware of the problem when a young girl in Tennessee wrote to him about a mysterious illness that had befallen her father and grandfather. Although few remember his hearings on that site in Toone, Tenn., Gore said his efforts made a lasting impact. "I was the one that started it all," he said.
Gore's shorthand description of Love Canal -- and his failure to note that the hearings he chaired came a few months after President Jimmy Carter declared the neighborhood a disaster area -- were reminiscent of earlier attempts to embellish his role in major events.
He has been ridiculed for claiming to have been the inspiration for the movie "Love Story," and today even he poked fun at his earlier assertion that he invented the Internet.
In a December 2, 1999, article, Connolly wrote:
Add Love Canal to the list of verbal missteps by Vice President Gore.
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 when he said at a high school forum Tuesday in New Hampshire: "I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal."
Gore went on to brag about holding the "first hearing on that issue" and said "I was the one that started it all."
But yesterday, the Democratic presidential candidate called an Associated Press reporter in upstate New York to play down his role and applaud local residents of the Niagara neighborhood who fought the long battle against the waste site.
"If anybody got the misimpression that I claimed to do what citizens in Love Canal did, I apologize," Gore said in a telephone interview he initiated.
As a junior House member, Gore held hearings in 1978 on the dangers of chemical contamination -- two months after residents evacuated Love Canal.
But Gore did not say "I was the one that started it all," as Connolly wrote, but rather: "that was the one that started it all" [emphasis added] -- a fact that, as Media Matters has also documented, was clear as early as the December 1, 1999, broadcast of MSNBC's Hardball, which, according to the Nexis transcript, played a clip of Gore saying:
GORE: I found a little place in upstate New York called Love Canal. Had the first hearing on that issue and Toonteague (ph), Tennessee, that was the one you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all. 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 still have work to do but we made a huge difference, and it all happened because one high school student got involved.
As Gene Lyons wrote in a February 16, 2000, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette column:
Speaking at a high school in Concord, N.H., Gore tried to persuade students that individual citizens can make a difference. As an example, he cited a high school girl in Toone, Tenn., who'd alerted his congressional office to a toxic waste dump in the 1970s.
After the young woman alerted him, Gore said: "I called for a congressional investigation and a hearing. 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, Tenn. That was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all."
The Post ran a correction of Connolly's December 1, 1999, and December 2, 1999, articles on December 7, 1999: "A Dec. 1 article and a Dec. 2 Politics column item about Vice President Gore's involvement in the Love Canal hazardous waste case quoted Gore as saying 'I was the one that started it all.' In fact, Gore said, 'That was the one that started it all,' referring to the congressional hearings on the subject that he called."
A March 5, 2000, column by the Post's ombudsman noted that what Gore actually said about Love Canal was "a whole lot different from The Post's version ... which fits the role The Post seems to have assigned him in Campaign 2000":
As for Love Canal, Gore said that after a high school student contacted him about a toxic waste site in Toone, Tenn., he sought information about other such sites, learned about Love Canal, and used the two as case studies in a hearing that led to legislation aimed at cleaning up such sites. As he put it: "I ... had the first hearing on that issue, and Toone, Tenn. -- that was the one you didn't hear of -- but that was the one that started it all." That is a whole lot different from The Post's version, "I'm the one that started it all," which fits the role The Post seems to have assigned him in Campaign 2000.
From the May 28 Washington Post article:
The Republican National Committee, grumbling John McCain staffers and conservative bloggers have tried for months to label Barack Obama as a serial exaggerator and heir to Al Gore, whom Republicans tarred in 2000 as someone who claimed to have discovered the Love Canal disaster and invented the Internet.
It just wasn't sticking. But yesterday, they thought they'd finally caught him red-handed.
MMFA is doing more to mislead than the WP by it's selective editing of the WP quote. I imagine most people reading this never even realized that the article wasn't about Al Gore. You have to go to the second to the last sentence above to find out the context in which Al was referred. Even then the sentence is parsed with bold to diminish the main idea which is the article was talking about Obama.
That being said, the line from the WP about Gore was simply a reference and not even the subject of the sentence. And yes, the sentence was accurate. Republicans did tar Gore as someone who claimed to have discovered the Love Canal. If you read Al's quote, even though the WP misquoted him, he was is indeed taking credit for starting it all by claiming that he had the first hearing.
I can't wait to see Al claim he invented global warming. Maybe someone will give him a prize for that? :-)
MMFA is doing more to mislead than the WP by it's selective editing of the WP quote.
AA, I'm not exactly sure what straw you're grasping at here. Is your position that there can be no misinformation about Al Gore in the article because the article is primarily about Obama? Strange approach, but good luck with it.
Maybe I've missed it. How about posting the selectively edited quote, and then the complete version you think tells the whole story. That should make your point more clear.
AA
I do not get your point? Are you saying Al Gore is not being treated unfairly?
So when is Gore going to put his money where his mouth is? Will he debate Klaus?
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/208338,czech-president-klaus-ready-to-debate-gore-on-climate-change.html
Link didn't go through????
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/208338,czech-president-klaus-ready-to-debate-gore-on-climate-change.html
Well, why don't you ask Gore?
As for me, the answer is pretty clear, Klaus is not what he claims to be:
His vocal enthusiasm for the free market economy and as exemplified by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman and practised by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, together with his stated belief in Adam Smith's "Invisible Hand", soon became well-known and Klaus was the principal shaper of the Czechoslovak economic transformation. His critics later on pointed out that during his premiership he had neglected the importance of law (in particular battling corruption), largely ignored the enforcement of property rights on the stock market, and that his pet project, the voucher privatization, was poorly executed and didn't bring the economy responsible owners it needed. They claim that his record in government does not justify the picture of Klaus as a major free-market figure. His avowed aim of creating a nation which participated in the capitalist system as shareholders signally failed, with most of the privatisations of his tenure ending up in relatively few, and often opaque, hands.
Scandals
Klaus continued as Prime Minister after the 1996 election, but the ODS's win was much narrower and his government was plagued by instability, serious economic problems, and accusations of corruption. He was forced to resign[2] in November 1997 after a government crisis caused by an ODS funding scandal, an event later called "Sarajevo Assassination" (sarajevský atentát) by his sympathisers, in analogy with the assassination in Sarajevo that has started the First World War, because the calls for him to resign occurred during his visit of Sarajevo at that time. He has consistently refused to accept responsibility for or discuss any of the corruption scandals which arose within his party and under his government.[3]
Czech President Václav Havel publicly referred to Klaus' economic policies as "gangster capitalism" and blamed the prime minister for perceived corruption surrounding his policy of voucher privatization and his côterie of close allies such as the dentist, politician, and entrepreneur Miroslav Macek or StB honcho Václav Junek
My, he's got some great credentials there. No wonder you're asking that question!
Thanks, Snoop. I was going to look into Mr. Klaus a little bit. He was the darling of righty radio today, saying everything the Global Warming deniers want to hear.
Creepiest moment -- Dennis Prager saying (and I'm quoting as closely as I can from memory); "I want to hug Klaus. I would hug him so hard, he would wonder about my sexual orientation. I would kiss him".
Prager would totally switch teams if a guy just lied to him enough. If somebody can find the audio,it's hot hot hot!
From reading the three sentences cited in the Washington Post, I'd have guessed the citation to be something like...
Washington Post Repeats Hear-Say: "label Barack Obama as a serial exaggerator and heir to Al Gore"
...but instead, it's about something with the erotic name of "the love canal"
And about something said about Al Gore, 8 or 9 years ago... isn't it a little late to be closing the barn door on this one?
Isn't this a little like closing the barn door after the horse has got out, and after he ran down the street, and ran for President, but was so dumb he watched television and allowed them to tell him he lost the election, and he believed it, and he called up GWB to say congrats, but then Dan Rather said oops the AP says this election hasn't been decided yet, and then Al Gore calls GWB and says never mind, and then he stands by while Florida gets stolen from him (and from millions of Floridians), and while the election gets stolen by Bush Baker Scalia et al, and then he Presides as VP over the opening of the Certificates and over counting of the Electoral Votes in the House of Representatives, and Presides over the theft of the election from him and from millions and millions of Americans who voted for him... isn't it a little late to be closing the barn door?
That race is over: throw those losing tickets away: it's a new race, and a new field of horses...
Washington Post Repeats Hear-Say: "label Barack Obama as a serial exaggerator and heir to Al Gore"
"Serial exaggerator": That sounds like something you make up, to call someone, when you wish you could call them a liar, but you can't because they don't and didn't tell a lie... "serial exaggerator": boy, I bet American politics has never ever seen anything like that.
Was excited to see MMFA finally try to kill the persistent scurilous rumor that Al Gore once claimed that he "invented the Internet" But all you did was state that he denied saying it. You went to great lengths of bytes and words and quotes to put it to rest, but unfortunately your email today [5/29/08] focussed almost exclusively on the Love Canal canard with any specific quotes or citations, apparently trying to label the Internet rumor only with implication and inference. Won't you please try again?
Bill Shaw, Dallas TX
Uh, Gore did claim to have created the Internet.
You say "invented, he says "created."
The idiot wanted to take credit for the creating the Internet, and even his most stauch suckups in the liberal media had to call him on it.
Even Snopes.com acknowledges this, although they do spin it nicely in favor of the guy who would have lost the popular vote in Florida had that mainstream liberal media not called the state Gore's an hour before the polls closed. Yes, thanks to that liberal media, tens of thousands of mostly Republicans in the panhandle didn't bother to vote after work. Please check out Bill Sammon's excellent book, At Any Cost: How Al Gore Tried to Steal the Election. Seems whenever a state was anywhere near an Algore win, that liberal media proclaimed it for him. Any state leaning red by the same margin was deemed "too close call," code for "hurry up, Democrats, or the Republican will win!"
So go ahead and delude yourself, a la Eric Alterman and the rest of the George Sorostitutes. Nitpick over a few dangling chads, the intent of a few more people who very well may have voted straight Democrat, but didn't like either candidate for president, who you think must have really want to vote for Gore. Recount only in counties where you might be able to pick up a piddly 537 votes. And try to rely on the Florida Supreme Court, most of whom are Democrat appointees, to hand the election to the guy who says he created the Internet, was the inspiriation for Love Story, and implied that the world knew nothing about Love Canal until he, Al Gore, "discovered" it. Or whatever verbage he used.
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Oh, and the reason he's not running for president, even though he would've creamed HRC (and that goofy guy who's campaigned in all 57 states, and who recognized many dead veterans at his campaign rally)...Gore is scared sh*tless about having to debate climate. He won't do it."