Let's sting a reporter for playing stupid games with Al Gore--

[Jackpine Radical]

I'm doing something I wouldn't ordinarily do--I'm creating an OP that piggybacks off somebody else's thread. I'm doing this because I'm hoping to trigger a specific action on the part of people on this board.

Here's the original thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5588008

AP mocks Al Gore's lack of ignorance
Published Mon, Apr 27, 2009 11:09am ET by Jamison Foser

Associated Press reporter Laurie Kellman, on Al Gore's appearance before a House committee considering global warming legislation:

"I have read all 648 pages of this bill," Gore bragged, a boast that would surprise no one who caught his teacher's-pet performance in the 2000 presidential race. "It took me two transcontinental flights on United Airlines to finish it."

The schoolhouse metaphor is appropriate, if not for the reason Kellman thinks. There are perhaps only two groups of people who view knowledge as a flaw, and ignorance as an asset: Seventh-graders, and the Washington press corps.

For years leading up to the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore committed the sins of taking policy seriously, and of knowing what he was talking about. As punishment for those sins, reporters like Kellman mocked him as a "teacher's-pet" and a dull, lifeless buffoon. They propped up a dim-witted Texan (by way of Greenwich Country Day, Andover, Harvard, and Yale) who had run business after business into the ground, and skipped out on the National Guard service that kept him out of Vietnam by virtue of his father's accomplishments. On the other hand, he called reporters "Stretch," and they loved him for it. And so George W. Bush became president.
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And here's the link to the MediaMatters piece,

http://mediamatters.org/countyfair/200904270009?show=1

and finally, here is a link to a thread where you can go to rate the reporter's credibility. At this moment, there are only about 100 total votes on it, and she has a 99% credible rating. Every vote we put on it will make a perceptible difference, and will get the attention of her editors. Let's go for it.

http://www.newscred.com/author/show/name/laurie-kellman

And, although I'm usually turned off by appeals like this, if you should choose to K&R this thread, it will perhaps have a very beneficial effect on the outside world.

Thank you all for your consideration
Jackpine