With Gore facing sex accusation, long-lost memories emergeBy: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent - Washington Examiner
07/08/10 8:55 AM EDT
In a semi-reassessment of the character of former vice president Al Gore, the liberal journalist Melinda Henneberger, editor of Politics Daily, casually drops an anecdote we
haven't heard before:
For years, he was belittled for being so annoyingly right all the time; Gail Sheehy once criticized him for having no discernable body fat. "He tries too hard to be perfect", she wrote in "Flawless, But Never Quite Loved," a 2000 opinion piece in The New York Times. "Perfection is a serious flaw for a modern politician. Mr. Gore has suffered from it all his life." Maureen Dowd pegged him as a "goody-goody" locked into the Good Son Role," "the Tin Man: immobile, rusting, decent," and "so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct he's practically lactating."
But that was always a caricature;
Gore was also sarcastic, droll, and fully capable of playing hard ball. A journalistic colleague I had no reason to doubt told anyone who would listen that Vice President Al
Gore had tried to stick his tongue down her throat out of nowhere at a New Year's Eve party in the mid-90s, when all she'd been expecting was a friendly peck.
Gore's behavior, as described by Henneberger, seems neither sarcastic, nor droll, nor hardball. (Doesnt "playing hardball" apply to things like salary negotiations and political dealmaking "not forcing yourself on a woman at a party") Rather, it suggests, at best,
a boorishness in Gore that some in the media knew about but never got around to mentioning until now, as police investigate a massage therapist's claim that
Gore sexually assaulted her in a Portland hotel room in 2006.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs/beltway-confidential/with-gore-facing-sex-accusation-long-lost-memories-emerge-98018114.html
