Reply #7: one of my all-time favorite corrections ... and they got it wrong!

[nixonwasbetterthanW]

<http://www.dailyhowler.com/h120799_2.shtml>

Sure enough—here is the hapless Post's sorry effort to "correct" its gruesome error:

THE WASHINGTON POST: A Dec. 1 (1999)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.



But "That was the one that started it all" plainly does not refer to the hearings. Here, once again, is the actual text the Post editor had apparently never seen:

GORE: 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 waste 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.

"That was the one that you didn't hear of" clearly refers to Toone, Tennessee. Gore also includes this element in his account of this matter in Earth in the Balance—Love Canal became famous, Toone didn't (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 12/7/99). "But that was the one that started it all" also, plainly, refers to Toone. ("That was the one that you didn't hear of. But that was the one that started it all." Children could figure this out.)