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Jewish World Review Oct. 20, 2000 / 21 Tishrei, 5761

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter
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The three faces of Al

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- GORE'S VARIOUS PERSONALITIES are like the unhappy families described by Tolstoy: He's always weird, but he's weird in different ways.

In the first debate, Gore was the insufferable brown-noser -- constantly interrupting to get just "one more" point in, heaving exasperated sighs, hogging more than his fair share of airtime, and reminding the teacher that she forgot to assign homework.

Even Jay Leno (who can find nothing critical to say about Ralph Nader because Nader "tells it like it is") joked that the day after the debate, Bush was campaigning in the Midwest and Gore was still at the podium trying to make one more point.

At one point during that debate, our little Miss-Know-It-All referred to "Yugoslavia, as they call Serbia plus Montenegro ..."

Naturally, Gore's advisers had to take dramatic action. They forced him to watch the "Saturday Night Live" version of the debate, which would have satirically exaggerated Gore's annoying tropes if that had been possible. (See if you can tell the difference: Which Al Gore told an interminable sob story and then tried to deliver two closing statements?)

By the second debate, Gore had miraculously transformed himself. No longer the know-it-all brown-noser, Gore managed to become Norman Bates in the last scene of "Psycho." He was so tightly controlled for that second debate that you could almost hear him thinking to himself: "I hope they are watching. They will see. They will see and say, 'Why, she wouldn't even hurt a fly.'"

So naturally, the entire nation was on tenterhooks waiting to see what weirdness Gore would unleash at the final presidential debate. The results are in, and the answer is: Tracy Flick in the movie "Election."

It got to the point that even the audience was laughing at Gore for his ridiculous pomposity. Bush was in on the joke, laughing and winking at audience members, as Gore grew increasingly insufferable.

It's always so great to see the reaction of normal Americans to the Clinton-Gore team. Remember how the Washington, D.C., grand jury laughed out loud at President Clinton's testimony? You know, the same testimony windbag pundits would soon be ponderously describing as "legally accurate"?

Every time the American people get a look at Al Gore, unfiltered by the media propaganda machine, you have the same effect. Media blowhards speculate (increasingly unconvincingly) that Gore may be just "too smart" to be president, while the public keeps laughing at him for being such a dork.

In the final debate, a classic Gore moment came when Bush asserted that Gore's promised federal handouts would require three times the spending Clinton had proposed. Gore butted in, as he is wont to do, with this dazzling retort: "That's in an ad, Jim, that was knocked down by the journalists who analyzed the ad and said it was misleading."

Oh -- "journalists" said it was misleading, did they? A quick Lexis-Nexis search turned up just who these "journalists" are. Amazingly enough, it was The New York Times (!) which, in another couple of weeks, will be topping off its daily campaign propaganda for Gore with an official Gore endorsement. Gore might as well have protested that Clinton had called the ad "misleading."

In fact, even Gore's adjunct staff at the "Newspaper of Record" didn't say what Gore said they said.

The Times' claimed only that the ad's 10-second description of Bush's proposed tax cuts was "somewhat misleading" because it was based on a family with two children. "Single people and families with fewer than two children," the Times alerted its readers, "would not fare as well."

Interestingly enough, though, the Times did not contest the ad's assertions about Gore's gargantuan spending plans. Indeed, the Times' "accuracy"-meter supported Bush's claim that Gore's spending plans are three times what Clinton had proposed -- leaping in only to defend Clinton on the grounds that he had "made his proposals at a time when the government was running a record budget deficit and was constrained from expanding or adding programs."

Bush responded to Gore's jackass interruption by saying: "Forget the journalists. You propose more than Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis combined. In other words -- this is a big spender ..."

When the moderator tried to move on, Fibber McGee butted in ("I've got to answer that, Jim") and again demanded that due obeisance be paid "the journalists." The journalists, Gore proclaimed, "are the keepers of the scorecard."

Unfortunately for Gore, every four years the American people get to replace the journalists as "keepers of the scorecard." The journalists' "scorecard" said that Clinton became a more popular president with each additional felony he committed. Now they say Norman Bates-cum Tracy Flick must be president. Forget the journalists. This time, the American people get to vote in the only poll that really counts.


JWR contributor Ann Coulter is the author of High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case Against Bill Clinton. You may visit the Ann Coulter Fan Club by clicking here.


Up

10/17/00: Must Christian conservatives be fascists?
10/13/00: Oil good; Dems bad
10/10/00: Al Gore: Serial fibber
10/06/00: Sigh of the crook
10/03/00: So who's the 'dumb guy' now?
09/29/00: Don't do drug legalization
09/26/00: I'd burn down my neighbor's house
09/22/00: Democrats worship the money shot
09/19/00: Other film footage we'd like to see
09/15/00: Bush can name the **^%*
09/12/00: The Supreme Court ratchet
09/08/00: Our mistake -- keep polluting
09/05/00: Bubba protects and serves
09/01/00: AlGore's 'going out of business!' tax plan
08/29/00: Bush's compassionate conservatism
08/25/00: Space alien tells funny jokes in bathtub
08/22/00: Dems view world only in black and white, not in color
08/18/00: Another Damascus Road conversion
08/15/00: The viagra cotillion
08/11/00: The hand-wringing Hamlet from Hartford
08/07/00: The Democratic party's white face
08/04/00: Hillary's potty mouth
08/01/00: The hole in the story
07/28/00: Cheney's detractors can't get their story straight
07/25/00: AlGore: Elmer Blandry
07/21/00: The tyranny of non-objectivity
07/18/00: The state's religion
07/14/00: Reform it back
07/11/00: Keating for veep
07/07/00: Gore invented 'Clueless'
07/04/00: The stupidity litmus test
06/30/00: O.J. was 'proved innocent' too
06/27/00: The last guys 'proved innocent'
06/23/00: Serious Republican candidates don't get serious press
06/19/00: They weren't overzealous this time
06/16/00: Evolution of the strumpet
06/13/00: Actual journalistic malpractice
06/09/00: I did not have sexual
relations with that ... man!
06/06/00: IRS turns Bubba's screw
05/30/00: Too corrupt to be an Arkansas lawyer
05/26/00: Choose liberalism
05/24/00: Violence against coherence
05/22/00: Developmentally disabled Republicans
05/16/00: For womb the bell tolls
05/12/00: Asylum from Georgetown
05/10/00: The truth is out there, even for the clueless
05/08/00: Barbie is a liberal Democrat
05/02/00: Moving the goalpost
04/28/00: The bastardization of justice
04/25/00: How Monica Lewinsky saved the constitution
04/24/00: It's sunny today, so we need gun control
04/19/00: No shadow of a doubt -- liberal women are worthless
04/14/00: It takes a Communist dictator to raise a child
04/11/00: The verdict is in on Hillary
04/07/00: Vast Concoctions III
04/04/00: 'Horrifying' free speech in New York
03/31/00: Check-Off Box For Pimp Suits
03/28/00: All the news that fits -- we print!
03/24/00: Net losses all around
03/20/00: To protect, serve --- and be spat on
03/16/00: Thank Heaven for the consigliere
03/13/00: Vast concoctions II
03/09/00: The bluebloods voted against you
03/07/00: The Tower of Babble
03/03/00: Vast concoction
03/02/00: Hillary's sartorial lies
02/28/00: You have to break a few eggs to make a joke
02/22/00: I've seen enough killing to support abortion
02/18/00: A liberal lynching
02/15/00: McCain and the flag
02/11/00: The Shakedown Express
02/08/00: To mock a mockingbird
02/05/00: Summing up Campaign 2000: 'Oh, puh-leeze!'
02/01/00: A Confederacy of Dunces
01/28/00: Dollar Bill's racist smear
01/24/00: How high is your freedom quotient?
01/21/00: Numismadness
01/18/00: How dare you attack my wife!
01/14/00: The Gore Buggernaut
01/10/00: The paradox of discrimination law

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