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Two years after the election, Gore gave an extraordinary interview to the New York Observer that could be read as an explanation of what happened to his presidential campaign. Gore charged that conservatives in the media, operating under journalistic cover, are loyal not to the standards and conventions of journalism but, rather, to politics and party. Gore said:

The media is kind of weird these days on politics, and there are some major institutional voices that are, truthfully speaking, part and parcel of the Republican Party. Fox News Network, the Washington Times, Rush Limbaugh -- there?s a bunch of them, and some of them are financed by wealthy ultra-conservative billionaires who make political deals with Republican administrations and the rest of the media.... Most of the media [has] been slow to recognize the pervasive impact of this Fifth Column in their ranks -- that is, day after day, injecting the daily Republican talking points into the definition of what?s objective as stated by the news media as a whole....

Something will start at the Republican National Committee, inside the building, and it will explode the next day on the right-wing talk-show network and on Fox News and in the newspapers that play this game, the Washington Times and the others. And then they?ll create a little echo chamber, and pretty soon they all start baiting the mainstream media for allegedly ignoring the story they?ve pushed into the zeitgeist. And then pretty soon the mainstream media goes out and disingenuously takes a so-called objective sampling, and lo and behold, these RNC talking points are woven into the fabric of the zeitgeist....

True to form, the right-wing media greeted this factual description with yet another frenzy of repetitive messaging portraying Gore as crazy. Speaking of Gore on FOX News, The Weekly Standard?s Fred Barnes said, "This is nutty. This is along the lines with, you know, President Bush killed Paul Wellstone, and the White House knew before 9/11 that the attacks were going to happen. This is -- I mean, this is conspiratorial stuff." Also on FOX, syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said of Gore, "I?m a psychiatrist. I don?t usually practice on camera. But this is the edge of looniness, this idea that there?s a vast conspiracy, it sits in a building, it emanates, it has these tentacles, is really at the edge. He could use a little help." "It could be he?s just nuts," Rush Limbaugh said of Gore. "Tipper Gore?s issue is what? Mental health. Right? It could be closer to home than we know." "He [Gore] said it?s a conspiracy," Tucker Carlson said on CNN?s Crossfire. "I actually think he?s coming a little unhinged," The Weekly Standard?s David Brooks, now at the New York Times, said of Gore on PBS.

As I write in early 2004, the Republican Noise Machine is primed to run the same campaign of personal vilification in the 2004 presidential election, no matter which Democrat wins the nomination. An op-ed piece in the Washington Post by Charles Krauthammer has pronounced former Vermont governor Howard Dean "the Delusional Dean." Krauthammer?s "diagnosis" rested on a transcript of a Dean appearance on MSNBC?s Hardball with Chris Matthews. Through the use of ellipses, Krauthammer doctored the transcript to make his point.2 As Gore?s experience demonstrated, Democrats ignore these attacks at their peril: Not only do such attacks confirm the preconceptions of Republicans but they shape the thinking of undecided voters and even of Democrats. One of the most frightening experiences I have had in recent years in talking with rank-and-file Democrats is the extent to which they unconsciously internalize right-wing propaganda. To add insult to injury, too many Democrats have a tendency to blame the victims of these smears -- their own leaders -- rather than addressing the root of the problem. For instance, when Senator Daschle made the factual statement that "failed" diplomacy had led to war with Iraq, right-wing media accused him of siding with Saddam Hussein. The ensuing controversy caused many Democrats to think Daschle had put his foot in his mouth.

With the right-wing media now a seemingly permanent and defining feature of the media landscape, if Democrats cut through the propaganda and win back the White House in 2004, they still face the prospect of being brutally slammed and systematically slandered in such a way that will make governing exceedingly difficult. There should be no doubt that the right-wing media?s wildings of 1993 -- which led to Clinton?s impeachment four years later -- will be replayed over and over again until its capacities to spread filth are somehow eradicated.

-David Brock