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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

Vote against the lies

Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore was recently in Las Vegas to accept the endorsement of the Teamsters union. While this alone is pretty mundane, what occurred during his acceptance speech should raise some serious questions for the voting public. \nGore, for some unknown reason, felt like he had to say something from the heart, something to convince the friendly Teamster audience that he really wasn't an android, so, as USA Today reported, he told the audience of his childhood memory of his mother singing an old union lullaby, "Look for the Union Label," to him in his cradle. \nThis would be a nice sensitive reminiscence if only for one, as a writer for the The Times in London termed it, "discordant detail," better known as a lie. You see, the problem is the song wasn't written until 1975. If Gore is being truthful, the implication then is that his mother lullabied him to sleep in his crib at age 27. That makes for a very creepy mental image. \nEqually creepy is that Gore would unhesitatingly make such an obvious and instantly verifiable lie in front of a friendly audience and media contingent. If this man cannot tell the truth about simple stuff like where he grew up (a fancy hotel in Washington, not a farm in Tennessee), and that he single-handedly created both the Internet and the Strategic Oil Reserve (the reserve was created before Gore was ever elected to Congress in the first place), how can I expect him to suddenly change and speak to me honestly as the chief executive? \nAs far as policies go, I don't personally see a heck of a lot of difference between Gore and Bush. And I find Bush's abuse of the English language quite annoying at times, but in the end, I can tell that while Bush might not be the reincarnation of Daniel Webster, he is making a genuine effort to tell me the truth about himself and his goals for his administration. I cannot say the same about Gore. \nAnd, I would think, many others are turned off by a man that if taken at his word, created the Internet and Strategic Oil Reserve while being sung to sleep to a union lullaby by his mother at age 27 down on the family farm in Tennessee, and amazingly at the same time, planting good tobacco and fighting the big tobacco companies that killed his sister. And this litany only includes a small number of his personal claims. \nThese outrageous claims do not inspire confidence in his candidacy. They demonstrate his arrogance. He seems to believe that the American public, and even his own friendly supporters, are morons who will fall for anything if he only says it with mock-sincerity and the right vocal inflection. I believe the American voting public is much more intelligent than Gore suspects, and they will send him back to his crib on the family farm come November.

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