The Smoking Gun on the sex assault claim made against the former Vice President Noble Prize Winning Carbon-Offset Billionaire:
JUNE 24--In a bizarre statement to police, the Oregon woman who claims that Al Gore fondled and groped her during a massage session described the former Vice President as a giggling "crazed sex poodle" who gave a "come hither" look before pouncing on her in a Portland hotel suite. In a taped January 2009 interview with cops, the 54-year-old woman, a licensed masseuse whose name has been redacted from police records, read from a lengthy prepared statement that detailed her alleged October 2006 encounter with Gore at the Hotel Lucia. Excerpts from the Portland Police Bureau transcript of the 2009 interview can be found on the following pages. In December 2006, a lawyer for the woman told police about the purported encounter, but after the masseuse cancelled three interview appointments, the case was closed due to her refusal to "cooperate with the investigation or even report a crime." It is unclear why, two years later, she approached Portland police and sought to memorialize her allegations against Gore, who she portrayed as a tipsy, handsy predator who forced her to drink Grand Marnier, pinned her to a bed, and forcibly French kissed her. The woman's statement--which could be mistaken for R-rated Vice Presidential fan fiction--describes Gore as a man with a "violent temper as well as extremely dictatorial commanding attitude besides his Mr. Smiley Global Warming concern persona." After fleeing Gore's suite, the woman returned home to discover, a la Lewinsky, "stains on the front of my black slacks." Suspecting that the stains were Gore bodily fluids, the woman made sure not to clean them. "I carefully hung them up and decided to be sure not to launder them until I knew more what to do with what had happened. Just my intuition." While the masseuse hired a civil attorney, "I was not interested in making any money from this case," she told cops. "I did not want to be labeled a gold digger like the women in this situation are often labeled." The woman recently eased off this principled stand when she offered to sell her story to the National Enquirer for $1 million. (15 pages)Sure, the story sounds ridiculous, but if there is one thing we learned from the Democrats during the Clarence Thomas hearings it is that women do not lie about this kind of thing.
Oh, wait....if there is one thing we learned during the Bill Clinton presidency it is that women who accuse Democrats of these kinds of things are "nuts and sluts."
Never mind.
Needless to say, if this story targeted a Republican, the Media would be treating it as already proven and that America should engage in a "national dialogue" on the need to protect masseuses from sexual assault.
Although skeptical, this essay suggests reasons why the masseuse's story is not prima facie incredible:
Or, there's the Kurt Andersen argument: "You professionally rub naked flesh & call the *cops* about an untoward request?" This is, of course, the appropriate reaction: out of hand dismissal, besmirching of accuser's character and a scramble for reasons to not believe that a man whose environmental policy you admire is capable of such actions. (And speaking of hunches: this account is really consistent with the behavior of grabby drunk men we've encountered, just saying, especially the "he just giggled and acted like I was only teasing him" part.) It's equally premature to go ahead and deem this woman another Girl 27 - but the arguments against her credibility are uncomfortably reminiscent of that case. In her police report, the alleged victim said, "I was in a room with someone who was Teflon coated in terms of his credibility and celebrity status." How right she was.
Update: And there's more! Al Gore's accuser made contemporaneous statements to people she knew, which was a very important point against Clarence Thomas.
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