Scrapbook
Free Al Gore's Law School Transcript! Back in early November, when George W. Bush was stumbling over the names of South Asian political leaders, and the New Yorker had just published Bush's Yale...
...God forbid, however, that they should get their status cues wrong and mistakenly mock the upscale recreational vehicles that Times readers (or editors) vacation in...
...Sullivan offers two reasons...
...Reno asked, in a transcript released last week...
...Back in early November, when George W. Bush was stumbling over the names of South Asian political leaders, and the New Yorker had just published Bush's Yale grades and SAT scores, the Gore campaign enjoyed a little snicker at Bush's expense: "I guess we know that 'C' at Yale was a gentleman's 'C,'" said Gore spokesman Chris Lehane...
...I would respectfully suggest that the best thing for you to do is to authorize its immediate release in order that the embarrassment which will follow will be well behind you before the crucial upcoming primaries...
...He has always "defended the beauty and mystery and spirituality of...
...Andrew Sullivan, "Authoritarian"_ How The Scrapbook wishes it had never heard about the latest controversy involving Andrew Sullivan...
...And "on a personal level, I have never been in a long-term romantic relationship, and am perfectly happy without one...
...on December 8 Dean Syverud wrote you doing precisely that...
...Are they gay...
...In other words, it's fine for Times reporters to sit on cinder blocks, metaphorically speaking, and take pot shots at the people who live in trailer parks...
...It is an assault on "the ability to choose who one is and how one is presented, to control the moment of self-disclosure and its content...
...This speaks volumes about your character and your judgment, both of which most voters consider when choosing their President...
...Further confirmation, it would seem, that counterintelligence problems begin as intelligence problems...
...In 1991, for example, he took an eloquent stance against a guerrilla tactic then popular among the fringiest of gay activists: the involuntary "outing" of other—but still closeted—homosexuals...
...5...
...It should not have been associated with shabby surroundings...
...It's time for Gore to come clean...
...The Scrapbook—which hereby outs itself as a magazine feature of the heterosexual persuasion—rejects the notion that it "deserves" to know what Richard Simmons does in bed...
...Sullivan, of course, is the universally denominated "gay Tory Catholic intellectual" who has spent much of the 1990s unburdening himself on those public issues directly related to his identity...
...15, incidentally, Sullivan, responding to unrelated criticism in the online journal Salon, denied that his past support for a gay right to marriage was based on any moral preference for monogamy...
...Vanderbilt confirms that Thompson was in the same entering class as Gore...
...At least the gay part of it...
...As you know, you dropped out before getting your juris doctor degree...
...The brand is a luxury recreational trailer often referred to as a land yacht...
...Vice President: You may not remember that you and I were classmates at Vanderbilt Law School, Class of 1976...
...On November 28 of this year I wrote Vanderbilt Law School Dean Kent Syverud asking him to ask you to authorize release of your law school transcript to the public...
...And right there in the New York Times...
...12 magazine section of the Sunday Times, Sullivan has gone ahead and asked precisely that terrifying question of seven more-or-less prominent Americans whose "coyness" about their sexual orientation evidently annoys him no end...
...Some things are best kept private...
...Oops_ The correction of the week is actually a Dec...
...The practice is "authoritarian," Sullivan wrote...
...Ditto, too, for former New York mayor Ed Koch and TV personality Rosie o'Donnell and teen-pop schlockmeister Ricky Martin and— stand and be counted, damn you!—fit-ness-video goofball Richard Simmons...
...No one, as yet, has seen Gore's transcript...
...To date, you have refused...
...Scrapbook Oh, dear...
...8 letter to the Gore campaign from Vanderbilt's Dean Syverud...
...Suddenly, to Andrew Sullivan, this is an "obvious and legitimate" (and, impliedly, no longer terrifying) question...
...First, these people's "studied avoidance" of public discussion about whom they sleep with is "insulting to homosexuals, who know better...
...Truth is, The Scrap-book would rather not know...
...Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile, he writes, has made herself "ridiculous" by remaining mum about whether she's a lesbian...
...That was then...
...Ditto for Clinton cabinet secretaries Donna Shalala and Janet Reno, who "equivocate" on the subject, shrouding their sex lives "in deep ambiguity...
...The Scrapbook would rather have not known about that, either...
...Lehane was still laughing last week, but it sounded a bit forced, maybe because he had no ready response to the following letter, a copy of which was emailed by Thompson to The Scrap-book and a few dozen other media types: December 23, 1999 The Honorable Albert Arnold Gore Vice President of the United States Gore 2000 Campaign Headquarters Nashville, Tennessee Re: Dropping out of Vanderbilt Law School, Release of Your Transcript Dear Mr...
...is "terrifying...
...The longer you stonewall, the closer the ultimate release of the transcript comes to those primaries, thereby maximizing the harm to your Presidential hopes...
...Thompson won't say what it is he thinks the transcript will show...
...16 Editor's Note in the New York Times, which read in part: "The our Towns column on Dec...
...Because the unwanted question "Are you gay...
...Apparently, they can just tell, you see...
...anonymous sex," he wrote...
...Truly, JBT Copies: Iowa, New Hampshire, and national media...
...But, alas, he made it impossible to ignore—starting the whole damn thing himself, after all...
...On Dec...
...What's more, he argued, outing is cruel...
...Thanks but no thanks, Andrew...
...So the attorney general believes a spy for Beijing must advertise his pro-Beijing sentiments...
...And why is that...
...Now, though, in the Dec...
...Meanwhile, The Scrapbook is sending propitiatory Christmas cards to all its old college classmates...
...all GOP Presidential campaigns and Senator Bradley's campaign Touche...
...I would not have made this request if you had not made such a big deal about Governor Bush's illegally leaked Yale transcript and the fun you made of what you called his "gentleman's C." You have foolishly made academic records a campaign issue, just as you have tried to tie some of Senator Bradley's staff to tobacco ads, while your own staffers have much closer ties to such ads...
...Vice President, you and I both know what you are hiding by refusing to release your Vanderbilt Law School transcript...
...The Scrapbook has seen the Dec...
...commented that Greenwich [Conn.] 'is not a community of Airstream trailers where people sit outside on cinder blocks whiling away the hours by taking aim with their BB guns at upturned Buicks.' The reference to Airstream, though jocular, was unwarranted...
...And must therefore not be asked...
...Keystone Kops_ Janet Reno told Congress that the Justice Department didn't approve FBI wiretaps of suspect nuclear scientist Wen Ho Lee because Lee by reputation was pro-Taiwan and anti-Communist: "How are you [a spy for China] if you are clearly working with the Taiwanese government on matters that apparently involve non-classified information...
...And, second, such circumspection about sex is "condescending to heterosexuals, who deserve better...
...This ticked off John B. Thompson, a Coral Gables lawyer and, more significant, former law school classmate of Gore's...
...Vice President, you have brought this problem upon yourself by throwing stones at someone else's academic record, while your own Vanderbilt record sits there in a glass house...
Vol. 5 • January 2000 • No. 16
