Greg Sargent Skewers Maureen Dowd on her Insinuations against Gore!

[KoKo]

Update: A couple of commenters smacked me for making too big a deal out of this. Honestly, I wasn't trying to make too big a deal of it -- I was trying to have a bit of fun here, just like MoDo! I Alas, not all of us were born with her deft touch. You do what you can.

But seriously, the comments got me thinking about something. Sometimes the most trivial of misrepresentations end up being the ones that, with the assiduous assistance of wingnuttia and the indifference our outright hostility of a compliant press, end up most successfully taking on a life of their own and "defining" their victim. After all, look at the mindless media repetition that the "invented the internet" falsehood ended up enjoying -- and look at the reach and impact this media mindlessness ended up giving it. Before you know it, the "trivial" misrepresentations suddenly don't seem so trivial anymore. Just something to keep in mind. -- Greg Sargent

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Creative Editing By Maureen Dowd Transforms Gore Into Pompous Bore
February 28, 2007 --

Let's watch Maureen Dowd transform Gore into Bore -- in one quick and easy step that you can learn, too!

In her column today on Al Gore, Dowd writes:

The man who was prescient on climate change, the Internet, terrorism and Iraq admitted that maybe his problem had been that he was too far ahead of the curve. He realized at a conference that “there’re ideas that are mature, ideas that are maturing, ideas that are past their prime ... and a category called ‘predawn.’

“And all of a sudden it hit me,” he told John Heilemann of New York magazine last year. “Most of my political career was spent investing in predawn ideas! I thought, Oh, that’s where I went wrong.”

Yeah, so Gore thinks the reason he went wrong is he's "too far ahead of the curve." What a pompous, pretentious, self-absorbed bore, right?

But wait -- watch those hands...they move awful quick. Let's go back and take a look at the full and original New York magazine passage Dowd quoted from:

After dinner in Toronto, Gore and I walk across the street from the hotel to the cinema where An Inconvenient Truth has just finished screening. Gore is talking about his fascination with the future and what an oddball it has made him politically. “We had this meeting in London for Generation”—his investment fund—“and there was a presentation that looks at all the business ideas that can be invested in. There’re ideas that are mature, ideas that are maturing, ideas that are past their prime, venture-capital-stage ideas—and a category called ‘predawn.’ And all of a sudden it hit me: Most of my political career was spent investing in predawn ideas!” Gore laughs. “I thought, Oh, that’s where I went wrong!”

Yes, the man laughed -- he was joking! He was making fun of himself! But Dowd's quick hands excised that inconvenient fact with a bit of deft editing. (Also note the "pre-dawn" idea concept was Gore's in Dowd's version but actually wasn't Gore's in the original.) Thus it is that an amusing moment of ironic self-deprecation was magically transformed by Dowd into Gore as Bore. Poof!

read the rest at.........

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/02/creative_editin.php

[SoCalDem]

1. Good one.. BUT millions more people read MD, than Greg, and THAT'S the problem

we have.. BIG MOUTHS spew vile lies, and then "little people" rebuke them, but who's listening to them?

That's why people like Limbaugh, and most of the pundits are so dangerous. THEIR words are yelled, and everyone else's are whispered,,

[pretzel4gore]

5. they yell 'fire in a crowded theatre...

that's why they are so effective

[aquart]

2. Dowdy has always been into character assassination.

[zulchzulu]

3. Dowd's new nickname for Al Gore is "The Goricle"

What a clever wench she is....

:sarcasm:

[glitch]

4. Not just sick of Dowd, sick of all the snark she represents and is so "good" at.

Shallow and brittle, like a thin coat of ice over muck.