The Press on Gore's Endorsement of Dean

I mentioned Bob Somerby's Daily Howler Web site in my comments a couple of days ago about Gore and Dean. I was pleased to see that Somerby picked up on the same themeI did. And he gave it a much more thorough documentation that I would have been able to do.

He also notes that the conventional wisdom among the mainstream press - even from David Broder, who's been called the "dean" of political reporting for eons, for reasons that have never been apparent to me - is that it's just a puzzle why Al Gore might have wanted to endorse Howard Dean. And they surprisingly often omit the reason that Gore said clearly: the Iraq War. They also obsess about Gore's supposed rudeness to Joe Lieberman.

Here are the two posts on the themes he's had so far:

Motive Mouths (12/10/03)
There They Went Again (12/11/03)

This paragraph is a good example of his somewhat iconoclastic posture, which I find more and more has been laughing out loud about mid-way through his posts. From the 12/11/03 post (with two words edited with ** in deference to AOL's Terms of Service):

<< Why won't they even mention Iraq? Trust us - these people don't give a s**t about war in Iraq! They aren't going to die in the desert, and they don't give a good flying fig if you do. Is Al Gore right about Iraq? Is he right about the war on terror? That, of course, is a matter of judgment - but you won't see those questions discussed in these pages. These people are Heathers, Paris Hiltons, with Millionaire Pundit Values, and they don't give a s**t about wars or Iraq. Instead, they care about phone calls to poor Joseph Lieberman! It's all they understand; it's their only concern; and it's the one thing they're willing to ponder. They "puzzle" Gore's motives - and omit what he said! If they didn't exist, you couldn't invent them. >>

He's right about David Broder's column on the Gore endorsement, too. It was really pretty pathetic. And doesn't say a blessed word about Gore's emphasis on the Iraq War.

Tags: iraq war