But on Sunday, the Post unleashed its big guns once again; the mighty paper was deeply troubled by an error in Gore’s kooky book. Andrew Ferguson did the honors, right there in the Outlook section—the same high-profile Sunday section which sang the praises of brilliant Fred Thompson just a few weeks ago. You always think they can’t get dumber. But they can’t wait to prove you wrong! Indeed, here’s how Ferguson started:
FERGUSON (6/10/07): You can’t really blame Al Gore for not using footnotes in his new book, “The Assault on Reason.” It’s a sprawling, untidy blast of indignation, and annotating it with footnotes would be like trying to slip rubber bands around a puddle of quicksilver. Still, I’d love to know where he found the scary quote from Abraham Lincoln that he uses on page 88.You always think they can’t get dumber. Then, they do something like that.
How pitiful has the Post become? Ferguson said he’d love to know where Gore found his Lincoln quote—but, since Gore’s untidy puddle of a book lacks footnotes, he just couldn’t figure it out. But good lord! Gore’s book has twenty pages of end-notes—including an endnote that plainly explains the source of that page 88 Lincoln quote. The quotation comes from The Lincoln Encyclopedia, a 1950 Mcmillan compilation, edited by Archer Shaw. Yes, readers, that’s where Gore “found the quote.” It says so right in his book.
Gore’s book has 273 endnotes.