stop the presses by Eric AltermanAl, We Hardly Know Ye [from the March 1, 2004 issue]The evolution of the character invented by the media to play the role "Al Gore" will one day make a remarkable doctoral dissertation. The most doctrinaire postmodernist would have a hard time keeping up with the myriad literary inventions, textual subversions and convenient fictions necessary to sustain the ever-changing narrative. One day Gore is an uptight, hypercautious "serial exaggerator." Later, when it turns out that it was the media--most egregiously, the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly--who spread false stories about Gore that were picked up and...