# Gore tells a lie (or three) **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 5, 2000, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gore-tells-a-lie-or-three/35783 "2000-10-05T15:47:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2000, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gore-tells-a-lie-or-three/35783/81 "2000-10-10T02:44:18Z")
Along the lines of this thread, but concentrating on the older issues such as the Buddhist temple and the internet quote, check out this article entitled “Will Pseudoscandals Decide the Election?”: [http://www.prospect.org/archives/V11-21/wilentz-s.html](http://www.prospect.org/archives/V11-21/wilentz-s.html). It doesn’t really lend itself to “sound bites” so I won’t try to summarize it here. As the author there briefly points out, while everyone is fighting over the parsing of words, etc., as here, the bigger issues such as campaign finance reform receive scant attention. In fact, if you want to parse some words, check out Cheney’s debate doozy about “the government having nothing to do with” his being better off than he was 8 years ago: [http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2000/10/06/index.html](http://www.tompaine.com/opinion/2000/10/06/index.html). That article goes on to give an interesting and damning theory as to why Lieberman did not “out” Cheney on this lie. (By the way, the [TomPaine.com](http://TomPaine.com) website, always a wealth of interesting info, also has an article on the media’s claims of Gore’s lies…Check it out.) ---
**Author:** ![jamesglewisf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a5b964/32.png) [@jamesglewisf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jamesglewisf)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2000, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gore-tells-a-lie-or-three/35783/82 "2000-10-10T21:52:40Z")
Boy, you people are getting pretty intense. You need to relax. It’s just politics, not brain surgery. Nobody dies. The world does not end. Why don’t you kiss and make up? ---
**Author:** ![egkelly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/db5fbb/32.png) [@egkelly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/egkelly)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2000, 4:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gore-tells-a-lie-or-three/35783/83 "2000-10-11T16:33:01Z")
Gore seems to like the number 100,000 “we need to hire 100,000 new teachers”. Remember his boss (the 100,000 policemen initiative? Also, remember “midnight basketball”?-that was SURELY the cause of the recent big drop in crime… ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2000, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gore-tells-a-lie-or-three/35783/84 "2000-10-11T18:52:54Z")
Here’s an interesting article from SLATE on Gore’s lies: [http://politics.slate.msn.com/code/kausfiles/kausfiles.asp?Show=4/3/00&idMessage=5002](http://politics.slate.msn.com/code/kausfiles/kausfiles.asp?Show=4/3/00&idMessage=5002) Among the highlights: [ul] [li]While Erich Segal admits that Gore was a partial inspiration for the male lead in ‘Love Story’, he claims that Tipper was not in any way an inspiration for the female lead. But more importantly, he TOLD Gore this shortly before Gore made that famous statement. It seems Gore deliberately embellished the story because it sounded good that way, even though he knew it absolutely wasn’t true.[/li] [li]In the current campaign, Gore has said he “always, always, always” supported Roe vs. Wade, and “always supported a woman’s right to choose.”[/li] In fact, his early voting record was quite Pro-life, and he received a grade of 84% from the National Right to Life committee for his pro-life voting record. [li]In 1987 Gore told the Des Moines Register that as an investigative reporter he had gotten “a bunch of people indicted and sent to jail.”[/li] In fact, two people were indicted, and of the two one was acquitted and the other given a suspended sentence. Richard Nixon actually wrote a letter to Gore in 1987 telling him not to be “discouraged by the flack you are getting about possibly exaggerating your achievements as an investigative reporter.” It would seem that Gore already had a reputation for embellishing the truth by 1987. [li]Gore recently said that he supported the McCain-Feingold bill in the Congress, but Feingold wasn’t even elected to congress until a year after Gore was already gone. Later, during the primaries Gore embellished even this, and said of McCain-Feingold that “unlike Sen. Bradley, I was a co-sponsor of it.”[/li] [li]According to Gore biographer Bill Turque, “For years, Gore described to friends how he’d helped add stirring rhetoric to Hubert Humphrey’s acceptance speech at the 1968 Democratic convention.”[/li] It turns out that Gore once talked to a columnist who had ties to Humphrey, but that columnist had nothing to do with that election. Gore later claimed that it was ‘faulty memory’. [li]Speaking of his Vietnam days, Gore told the Baltimore Sun he had “walked through the elephant grass and … was fired upon.”[/li] It never happened. Gore was never in an active combat zone. [li]Gore told students in Concord, N.H., that after a high-school student tipped him off to toxic-waste problems in Toone, Tenn., in the late 1970s, “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, Tennessee–that was the one that you didn’t hear of. But that was the one that started it all.”[/li] The problem is that the ‘little place called Love Canal’ that he found was already the subject of national media attention, and the entire town had already been evacuated. [li]In discussing Bill Bradley’s proposed expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit in Time Magazine, Gore said, “I was the author of that proposal. I wrote that, so I say, welcome aboard. That is something for which I have been the principal proponent for a long time.”[/li] The EITC became law a year before Gore entered Congress. Even later on, Gore was never the ‘Principal Proponent’ of the EITC, which had a very large, bipartisan support base in Congress. [li]At a debate in Iowa, Gore asked “a couple of friends” in the audience to stand, gesturing to two mothers.[/li] > [@](#): > > Both of their children get Medicaid. Both of them as parents would be eligible for health care under my plan. Neither they nor their children would get Medicaid under Senator Bradley’s plan, and both of them would be given a $150-a-month voucher. It simply wasn’t true. Under Bradley’s proposal they would have been eligible for $417/mo. [/ul] Note that the CNN article was written back in April, before any of these latest ‘fibs’ came along. Once again, I find the disturbing thing about these stories is that they are mostly utterly trivial. Why did he have to tell the reporter that Tipper was the inspiration for the female lead, when he knew it wasn’t so? Wasn’t it a good enough story that he WAS the inspiration for the male lead? Why can’t he just say, “I’m a strong proponent of the EITC”, instead of claiming that he wrote it and was its principle champion? And he DOES have a strong record of environmental advocacy, so why make up lies about Love Canal? I think it all points to a person that is deeply insecure about himself. Gore had an extremely strong and influential father, and if you read his life story you find lots of evidence that his father pushed him around like crazy. Some friends of his have said that Gore would have been much happier as an academic, but his father would never allow it. Children of fathers like this often wind up having to ‘prove’ themselves over and over again. In Gore’s case, this manifests itself as compulsive embellishment of his own achievements. At least, that’s my 2-bit pop psych take on it. ---
**Author:** ![Maeglin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/8baadc/32.png) [@Maeglin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maeglin)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2000, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gore-tells-a-lie-or-three/35783/85 "2000-10-11T19:08:25Z")
> [@](#): > > Boy, you people are getting pretty intense. You need to relax. It’s just politics, not brain surgery. Nobody dies. The world does not end. Why don’t you kiss and make up? Obviously a lot of people care about these issues and consider them to be extremely important. If you do not understand why, then inquire. In the meantime, please take your sanctimony somewhere else and let us fight ignorance. Sorry I missed out on the debate, **Spiritus** , but a long weekend kept me away from my computer. Fight the good fight! As for why the precise meaning of Gore’s words has been the subject of such insane dispute, well, it seems fairly obvious to me. Call this a WAG if you will. This election has been manufactured by the media. If it were not consistently close, people would not watch the talking heads on TV or read the newspapers so closely. The media learned that it simply cannot sell expensive air or ad time if one candidate is running against someone like Bob Dole. If the media had not been pulling Gore’s words apart like a child tearing the wings off flies, this would be a dull and fundamentally uninteresting race. Gore would have trounced Bush in every way months ago. If truth in politics were so important, why have the blemishes in Bush’s past not been subject to the same attention? His military record is rife with lies, missing documents, and unexplainable absences. Sure, this has been covered _a little bit_, but has it really been given the same prominence in the media as Gore’s “lie” about class size? Or what about the Bush campaign’s policy to restrict incoming mail to its entire press contingent? Karen Hughes put her foot all the way down her throat when she said that “it’s not our job to see that the press gets its mail.” Well it certainly _is_ if you order all mail addressed to the press be approved by the campaign bosses first. Small wonder none of them got copies of Gore’s health plan. What about Bush’s blatant lies about the quality of education in Texas? Its environmental record? His failed business involvements? The preferential treatment he received in Bahrain on account of President Daddy? I do not believe that by disparraging Bush I am excusing Gore’s shortcomings, as numerous as you believe them to be. However, I am ashamed for America that its people have been so utterly manipulated by the media into believing that Gore’s so-called lies are anything more than a ploy to keep the presidential race exciting. MR ---
**Author:** ![Nanook\_of\_the\_North\_Shore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/bc8723/32.png) [@Nanook\_of\_the\_North\_Shore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nanook_of_the_North_Shore)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2000, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gore-tells-a-lie-or-three/35783/86 "2000-10-11T22:10:06Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Sam Stone \* > \*\*Here’s an interesting article from SLATE on Gore’s lies: > > [http://politics.slate.msn.com/code/kausfiles/kausfiles.asp?Show=4/3/00&idMessage=5002](http://politics.slate.msn.com/code/kausfiles/kausfiles.asp?Show=4/3/00&idMessage=5002) > > Among the highlights: > > [ul] > > \ > [li]Speaking of his Vietnam days, Gore told the Baltimore Sun he had “walked through the elephant grass and … was fired upon.”[/li] > It never happened. Gore was never in an active combat zone. > > [li]Gore told students in Concord, N.H., that after a high-school student tipped him off to toxic-waste problems in Toone, Tenn., in the late 1970s, “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, Tennessee–that was the one that you didn’t hear of. But that was the one that started it all.”[/li] > The problem is that the ‘little place called Love Canal’ that he found was already the subject of national media attention, and the entire town had already been evacuated. > > \ > > [/ul] > > Note that the CNN article was written back in April, before any of these latest ‘fibs’ came along. > > Once again, I find the disturbing thing about these stories is that they are mostly utterly trivial. Why did he have to tell the reporter that Tipper was the inspiration for the female lead, when he knew it wasn’t so? Wasn’t it a good enough story that he WAS the inspiration for the male lead? Why can’t he just say, “I’m a strong proponent of the EITC”, instead of claiming that he wrote it and was its principle champion? And he DOES have a strong record of environmental advocacy, so why make up lies about Love Canal? > > \*\* I suggest you go check this bit out at [snopes](http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/gorelies.htm). For example, on the Love Canal bit they have this to say: > [@](#): > > This is another case where the media misquoted and altered the context of a Gore statement to make it appear he was claiming credit for something he didn’t do (and Love Canal, of course, involved the dumping of toxic waste, not a “nuclear accident”). In November 1999, Gore was speaking to a group of high school students in Concord, New Hampshire, and he was citing examples of how individual citizens can bring about important changes. One of the examples he cited was a girl from Toone, Tennessee, who in the late 1970s brought her town’s problem with toxic waste to the attention of Gore’s congressional office. What Gore told the Concord students was: > 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, Tennessee – that was the one that 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’ve still got work to do. But we made a huge difference. And it all happened because one high school student got involved > What the press reported was that Gore had taken credit for discovering the problems with toxic waste at Love Canal – a site that had long since been evacuated – claiming that “I was the one that started it all.” But as reporter Robert Parry wrote: > 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. ‘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 this issue.’ . . . Gore said his efforts made a lasting impact. ‘I was the one that started it all,’ he said." > > The New York Times ran a slightly less contentious story with the same false quote: “I was the one that started it all.” There’s also a page on Gore’s military history [here](http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/goreviet.htm). Reading over it, it seems that Gore was in a hotfire zone, but only for a very short time. I don’t know about the rest of Slate’s claims, but if those two are any indication, I wouldn’t put much faith in them. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2000, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gore-tells-a-lie-or-three/35783/87 "2000-10-11T22:49:50Z")
Sorry, your Love Canal quotes don’t change a thing I said. Gore never LIED, but he chose words that sent the implied message that it was he who broke open the Love Canal story. When someone says, “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…”, he is trying to mislead. The implication here is that Love Canal was unknown. It was just a ‘little place in upstate New York that I found’. Really, take off your partison goggles. It’s clear that Gore was trying to give those kids the impression that he was personally responsible for discovering the Love Canal situation. He wasn’t. This is the same kind of lie that he made when he said that he helped write Humphrey’s acceptance speech. He DID talk to a writer who worked for Humphrey, and may actually have believed that the writer was currently working on the campaign. Even so, wouldn’t you agree that this is disingenuous? I once talked to a Member of Parliament on the phone for about half an hour. He phoned me to ask me about a letter I had written to the editor of the local newspaper, and we discussed some of the issues I raised that he agreed with. He then told me to keep fighting the ‘good fight’. End of conversation. What would you think of me if I started going around saying, “Joe Blow, a Member of Parliament, calls me to seek my input on policy matters?” Or even, “I helped Joe Blow formulate his policy on X”. Or, “I’ve been a consultant to the government on policy matters.” It’s kinda, somewhat, vaguely, fuzzily true. But I guarantee you that If I told that story I’d know deep down that I was LYING. These are the kinds of lies that Al Gore tells all the time. And this isn’t an election issue - he’s been getting called on this his entire political life. Nixon even wrote a letter to him about it in 1987. ---
**Author:** ![zen101](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/c68b51/32.png) [@zen101](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zen101)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2000, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gore-tells-a-lie-or-three/35783/88 "2000-10-11T23:02:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by ChiefWahoo \* > \*\ ***BorisB** said: > > > [@](#): > > > > So it’s a lie that there weren’t enough seats, because there is a reason why there weren’t enough seats? > > My point is that it is disingenuous to relate a story such as this to create a false picture of the situation. There weren’t enough seats because the room was being remodeled for $100,000 worth of new equipment,therefore the school is probably not in desperate need, as the story by Gore would seem to suggest. > > Got any easy answers for the other lies? > > Also, _I_ have corrected people on the “invented the internet” story, Al never said it. However the actual quote is just as misleading. > > \*\* Exactly. This is like me saying I was in a concentration camp. Not stating that this happened to be nearly 50 years after the war, but just making a powerful statement. Saying things about little girls who are forced to stand up in a classroom because there was no place for her to sit are much more moving than saying “While I was there, the room in which I chose to speak was filled with new science equipment so photos could be taken to make my boss Bill look good, but it also made sure that not enough chairs would fit in the room. This turns out to be real handy because now I can talk about not enough chairs in the classroom and not really be lying. I guess I could have chosen to speak in the auditorium where there are plenty of seats and all that equpment could have been on the stage if i really cared about little girls having to stand while I go on and on about things they could care less about, but I liked the lighting in the classroom better and it makes for better PR come February. Aren’t I clever” -Al Gore quote from an alternate reality where dishonesty and omission do not exist. zen101 D.F.A. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/gore-tells-a-lie-or-three/35783.md?page=4)