Deep Read: How the Media Murdered Al Gore

Although most journalists have a mild liberal bias, it's a tendency that, as I've noted before, is almost always outweighed by other, more powerful inclinations. A must-read article in October's Vanity Fair highlights one of the most powerful of all: the bias towards self-important bullying.

Gore couldn't catch a break from the press in the 2000 election. Accused of repeatedly distorting and exaggerating his accomplishments, the accusations almost always turned out, on closer inspection and too long after the fact, to be themselves distorted or exaggerated.

Evgenia Peretz singles out the journalists whose reporting or commentary did the most to cement the popular myth of Gore as a desperate, unlikable panderer and tries to get them to explain why they seemed to have it in for him, construing all of Gore's gaffes, real and imagined, as evidence of deep character flaws. Three New York Times writers -- Maureen Dowd, Frank Bruni and Kit Seelye -- come off particularly badly in her account, as does Ceci Connolly of the Washington Post.

Why did they do it? Peretz quotes one Times writer as saying "it was a self-loathing liberal thing," while Dan Rather blames the press's liking for caricatures. I think it's something even more senseless: perverse curiosity -- a desire to see its own power at work, whatever the outcome. It's the same impulse that makes 10-year-olds gang up on the new kid in class: They're not malicious; they just want to see what happens. They don't particularly care if he cries or fights back; either way, it tells them something.

Think I'm reading too much in the tea leaves? Check out this quote, from the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz:

"Everything is fair game in a presidential campaign, and part of the test of any candidate is how he deals with an often skeptical press corps.... The press sets up a series of obstacle courses... and if you are Al Gore and considered to be super-smart, yet not particularly gregarious, it's the moments of awkwardness or misstatements that are going to get the media attention."

How's that for arrogance? "Everything is fair game" -- even a quote that we made up and attributed to you. Call Gore a liar and see what happens; if he gets upset, he must be hiding something. Call Bush an idiot; if he laughs along with us, he must not be all that dumb. The true measure of a candidate's character is how he reacts to the media's provocations.

Al Gore photo by Gerald Holubowicz/Polaris