Gore misrepresented

I was amused by Ms. Rachel Alexander's commentary "The Democrats' Dan Quayle: Gore Gaffes" which tried to portray Vice President Gore as an even bigger embarrassment than former VP Quayle, if that's at all possible. Her column does a good job of showing how some people will go to great lengths dig up some minor blunders and use them to try and discredit and embarrass a person they don't like. She even goes so far as to say that the few blunders Gore made as a "flood of embarrassing misstatements" while referring to Quayle's blunders as "a couple of gaffes." I invite people who believe that Quayle only made "a few gaffes" to view http://www.xmission.com/~mwalker/DQ/ (or any of a hundred similar sites) for an incomplete list of actual Quayle quotes, like "Republicans have been accused of abandoning the poor. It's the other way around. They never vote for us," or "I love California, I practically grew up in Phoenix."

Ms. Alexander actually wonders why "the press was so quick to jump all over Quayle" but "you really have to really dig deep" on Gore-related blunders, when the answer is in the question.

Simply, Quayle made a whole hell of a lot more "gaffes."

I am no great Gore supporter, myself, but unlike Ms. Alexander, I know the difference between occasional misinformed arrogance and just plain stupidity. As for her one Al Gore source, it's ironic that all Ms. Alexander's facts came from the website of a conservative Christian pro-life feminist "Gen-X female with an attitude" self-nominated presidential candidate who likes South Park and Ozzy Osbourne. The adage "consider the source" comes to mind.

Joshua Scurran
Linguistics senior