Re: Media myths (Was Townsend)

["Dan Billings" <billings@suscom-maine.net>]

Using your sources, I came up with the following:

Gore said: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the
initiative in creating the Internet."

The truth is the Internet developed from a milatary reserach network that
was first created before Gore was elected to Congress.  Gore supported
expansion of the Internet into civilian uses, but the statement above
overstates his role.

 "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," Gore said.

"That was the one that started it all. ... We made a huge difference and it
was all because one high school student got involved."

In August 1978, Gore did chair hearings on the matter by the House Commerce
Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations - two months after the Love
Canal homes were evacuated and President Carter declared the neighborhood a
disaster area.  He hardly started it all.

It appears he may have got a bad wrap on Love Story, but he did repeat
misinformation that was in a newspaper article.  If he an Tipper were really
the model for the people in the story, you would think that he would have a
better source.

It appears clear to me that Gore tried to get away with oevrplaying his role
in these events, like many politicians do, and got called on it by his
political opponents and the media.  The short hand versions of these stories
may be unfair to Gore, but the full stories don't get him off the hock
either.

The Gore stories are not unusual in this matter.  Again and again, whenever
negative campaign ads or racial politics are discussed, the media digs up
the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 Presidential election and shows
a clip of the ad with the picture of Willie Horton.  This ad is almost
always attributed to the Bush Presidential campaign when it was done by an
independent group not affiliated with the Bush campaign.  The Bush ad on the
subject featured the revolving door at a prison and most of the prisoners
shown were white.  The Bush ad did not mention Horton by name, did not show
his photo, or mention his race.  Despite those facts, during the controversy
over Trent Lott's remarks, I saw the other ad on two different occassions as
an ad by the Bush campaign.

-- Dan Billings, Bowdoinham, Maine