Gore the butt of jokes about integrity

by Steve Johnson 7:55am Thu Oct 19 '00

sjohnson@hotmail.com

Late night talk show host Jay Leno has launched an offensive on the integrity of Vice President Gore. With the Veep the butt of so many jokes, it appears the cultural tide has turned against the Democrats.

The jury is in from Tuesday's debate and by most objective observers the Governor beat Al Gore again --that makes three strikes by my count for the Vice President!

In case you missed it, please read what one great humorist has said about the Vice President. Humor with a strong dose of the truth built in...



JAY LENO ON AL GORE!

"Al Gore ... he once was pro-life, now he's pro-choice. He once was against gun control, now he's for it. He claimed he invented the Internet. Hey, Gore just needs to debate himself!"

"Al Gore visited a bookstore today. He was shocked to find a book about everything he has said in his campaign could be found in the fiction section."

"Our country has come a long way: first we had George Washington, who couldn't tell a lie. Then we had Bill Clinton, who couldn't tell the truth. And now we have Al Gore, who can't tell the difference..."

and now, on to the serious stuff...

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When the public terms of debate in an empire are set by it's comedians, its buffoons (not prophets, which is what Lenny Bruce really was) this is a sure sign of decline and fall.

Before you start cheering about this, consider what happened to Europe after the fall of Rome -- Europe slipped into centuries of backwardness, chaos and violence. Even when it began to get things back together in the High Middle Ages things were far from pleasant. Murder rates were 20 times what they are in Europe today -- and they didn't even have primitive guns.

Leno's cheap jokes hide three crucial facts: (1) Bush's lies are far more enormous than Gore's -- his agenda is virtually identical with the Republican Congress, only his style is different. (2) Gore's actual lies concern matters of environmental protection, labor rights, human rights, etc. that the corporate media is utterly silent about. (Surprise! Surprise!) (3) The most significant lies of all are the ones that Bush, Gore and Leno all agree upon:

* The lies that will have us building new generations of weapons to fight non-existent enemies no matter who is elected.

* The lies that will have us "saving social security" by some means or other of weakening or destroying it, when there's *nothing* wrong with it, and it's actually the *source* of the enormous surpluses everyone is so careless with.

* The "what me worry?" attitude toward the long-term crises such as environmental devastation (global warming, ecosystem destruction, environmental racism, etc.), IMF/WB - generated Third World debt, the growing wealth gap both within the US and globally, the global AIDs epidemic (particularly in Africa), etc.

Keeing in mind all that Leno's jokes are hiding -- and I've only just scratched the surface -- let's take a look at Leno's joking:

"Al Gore ... he once was pro-life, now he's pro-choice. He once was against gun control, now he's for it. He claimed he invented the Internet. Hey, Gore just needs to debate himself!"

So he's learned a thing or two. He was pro-life a long time ago; he was against gun control a long time ago. He changed his mind. That's a GOOD THING. There's far too LITTLE of this in American politics, and Jay Leno is making fun of it?

And, of course, the real kicker: "He claimed he invented the Internet." This line is a complete non-sequiter. It has nothing to do with Gore changing his mind, it has nothing to do with the punch line, it's just tossed in as a standard-issue form of mockery.

And, of course, it's *UTTERLY FALSE* -- as explained in IMC-LA's featured article, "Campaign Lunacy" by Phil Agre (link below).

What we have here is our imperial buffoon spreading Republican lies about non-existent Gore lies -- all the while hiding the real lies that ought to concern us.

And to top it all off, Leno takes a joke from 1980s that aptly described Ronald Reagan -- and applies it to Al Gore because it actually now describes the entire political elite.

To refresh your memory, when Reagan said that trees cause pollution, that missiles launched at Russia could be recalled in mid-flight, that ketchup was a vegetable, that the Nicaraguan death-squad Contras were the moral equivilents of our Founding Fathers, that he would balance the budget by 1984... it was all to obvious that this joke caught the very essence of the man:

"George Washington, couldn't tell a lie, Richard Nixon couldn't tell the truth, and Ronald Reagan can't tell the difference."

(Recasting Clinton, who told one big whopper, in the role of Tricky Dick is yet another symptom of the pervasive lying that now grips our entire political elite.)

But there was another joke about Reagan as well:

Q: "How do you know when Reagan is lying?"

A: "When his lips are moving."

This joke, like the previous one, now applies wholesale to virtually all of the political elite.

I totally agree, except maybe with one small thing...

When it's said that the military industrial complex will be built up no matter what candidate wins, that's not necissarily true. If Ralph Nader, or a couple of the other third party candidates, were to somehow win the election they have voiced a desire to reduce the size of the military.

Does Ralph or Harry, or any of them have a shot? That's for another article to debate, but in a hypothetical situation these candidates would not build on the cold war budget.

If you're going to debate between Gore and Bush, I can tell you the best reasons to vote for each one: Gore -not Bush, Bush -not Gore.

Or are they? We'll all get to see firsthand over the next four years.