Vanity Fair runs one of those embarrassing suck up pieces on Karenna Gore Schiff who's thinking of running for political office.What's noteworthy isn't the haleography in this biased piece.It's the inability, as
Mickey Kaus would say for four layers of editors to get the facts straight.Here's a revisionist gem, from the Vanity Fair edited piece, about Karenna's grandfather Al Gore Sr.:
When Karenna was eight, she made a trip with her grandfather to show a Gore-farm bull in Kentucky's All-American Futurity. The bull was bigger than she was (so was her whip), and most of her competitors were adults. "I was so scared," says Karenna. "I knew it was really important—I was representing my family, and I had to get it right. And I remember my grandfather talking to me before I went out, being very firm, and saying, 'You're a Tennessee girl, you can do this. You're a Tennessee girl.'"
And she knew, from the beginning, just what kind of Tennessee girl. A Democrat. Albert Gore Sr. had served in the House and then the Senate for 32 years, himself a populist. He was a man of humble beginnings who took fiery stands, the ban old-style southern liberal Democrat who defended the underdog and called iggest of them in 1956, when he was one of three southern senators who refused to sign an ugly document, Strom Thurmond's Southern Manifesto. In 1970, Gore Sr.'s progressive stands caught up with him: he lost his seat in the Senate.
"It was something that I grew up steeped in," Karenna says. "My grandfather's loss in 1970, it was a big deal. He was for gun registration, and for facilitating busing of children for integrated schools. And those are things that still press buttons in the South. Growing up, I always saw him as heroic."
Really? Al Gore Sr. isn't exactly Mr.Intergration.Check out this little extract from
Project 21 about Al Gore Sr.:
Al Gore, Sr., together with the rest of the southern Democrats, voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Congressional Quarterly reported that, in the House of Representatives, 61% of Democrats (152 for, 96 against) voted for the Civil Rights Act as opposed to 80% of Republicans (138 for, 38 against). In the Senate, 69% of Democrats (46 for, 21 against) voted for the Act while 82% of Republicans did (27 for, 6 against). All southern Democrats voted against the Act.
In his remarks upon signing the Civil Rights Act, President Lyndon Johnson praised Republicans for their "overwhelming majority." He did not offer similar praise to his own Democratic Party. Moreover, Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen, an Illinois Republican, collaborated with the White House and the Senate leadership of both parties to draft acceptable compromise amendments to end the southern Democrats' filibuster of the Act. It was Dirksen who often took to the Senate floor to declare, "This is an idea whose time has come. It will not be denied." Dirksen's greatest triumph earned him the Leadership Conference of Civil Rights Award, presented by then-NAACP Chairman Roy Wilkins, for his remarkable civil rights leadership.
Inform yourself, so you can learn for yourself about this important historical event. All official records about the Civil Rights Act can be found in the June 1964 issues of Congressional Quarterly.
Al Gore, Sr. did not stop at simply voting against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In addition, Congressional Quarterly reported that Gore attempted to send the Act to the Senate Judiciary Committee with an amendment to say "in defiance of a court desegregation order, federal funds could not be held from any school districts." Gore sought to take the teeth out of the Act in the event it passed.
Ostensibly, Senator Gore was "elated" at the idea of young Al, Jr. going to school with black children. In reality, however, the future vice president attended an elite private school.
In the end, the Gore Amendment was defeated by a vote of 74-25. Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas, one of President Bill Clinton's political mentors, was among the 23 southern Democratic senators and only one Republican voting with Gore for this racist amendment.
For the Soviet angle on Al Gore Sr.,
Slate has a good piece.Anyway,the old notion of Al Gore Sr. being a friend to "integration" is laughable.No word yet on whether Karenna Gore Schiff will send her kids to non-magnet public schools where they can experience "integration and social justice" or whether they'll go to private schools where only white kids hang out.
