This isn’t really local. If there is a local angle it is this: that we’re lucky to have solid, fair-minded local political reporters instead of the kind of hacks who dominate coverage of national politics…

Vanity Fair has a blockbuster piece dissecting the War on Gore: the strange, multi-year hatchet job the Washington media did on Al Gore starting in the late 90s and continuing through the 2000 election. It is the reason George Bush was elected president and is probably the greatest journalistic (if I should even use that word here) travesty in the history of the United States if not all of human history. I am not exaggerating one iota when I say this.

You can read about all of the distortions and fabrications here. There’s too many to mention but let’s start with the grand-daddy of them all (as Keith Jackson would say): the myth that Al Gore claimed he invented the internet.

In answer to a question about why Democrats should support him, Gore spoke about his record. “During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative”—politico-speak for leadership—”in creating the Internet,” he said, before going on to describe other accomplishments. It was true. In the 1970s, the Internet was a limited tool used by the Pentagon and universities for research. As a senator in the 80s, Gore sponsored two bills that turned this government program into an “information superhighway,” a term Gore popularized, and made it accessible to all. Vinton Cerf, often called the father of the Internet, has claimed that the Internet would not be where it was without Gore’s leadership on the issue. Even former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich has said that “Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.”

And here’s the story behind the myth that he bragged about being the inspiration for Love Story:

The seeds of Gore’s caricature had been planted in 1997 when he, the presumptive candidate for 2000, made a passing comment about Erich Segal’s Love Story, over the course of a two-hour interview with Time’s Karen Tumulty and The New York Times’s Richard Berke, for profiles they were writing. Tumulty recounts today that, while casually reminiscing about his days at Harvard and his roommate, the future actor Tommy Lee Jones, Gore said, It’s funny—he and Tipper had been models for the couple in his friend Erich Segal’s Love Story, which was Jones’s first film. Tumulty followed up, “Love Story was based on you and Tipper?” Gore responded, “Well, that’s what Erich Segal told reporters down in Tennessee.”

As it turned out, The Nashville Tennessean, the paper Gore was referring to, had said Gore was the model for the character of Oliver Barrett.

And here’s the story of the two beat reporters who inexplicably trashed Gore at every turn:

As with all campaigns, the coverage of the 2000 election would be driven by a small number of beat reporters. In this case, two women at the most influential newspapers in the country: (Kit) Seelye from The New York Times and Ceci Connolly from The Washington Post.

A prominent Washington journalist describes them as “edgy, competitive, wanting to make their mark,” and adds that they “reinforced each other’s prejudices.”

“It was like they’d been locked in a room, and they were just pumping each other up,” says Gore strategist Carter Eskew.

“They just wanted to tear Gore apart,” says a major network correspondent on the trail.