norm-losermanWhen the press won’t call Norm Coleman a sore loser for prolonging Minnesota’s Senate dispute, it’s not just a matter of sticks and stones, Eric Boehlert argues at Media Matters. It’s prolonging the state’s political agony by relieving pressure on Coleman and setting a partisan double standard to boot. Al Gore got tagged as a “sore loser” — a not-so-temporary tattoo that not even a Nobel Peace Prize can erase – within the relatively short span of five weeks. Coleman has avoided it while extending a dispute that’s already taken almost four times as long.

Here’s Boehlert sampling from what he says were 900 sore-loser media mentions for Gore in 2000:

“By energetically pressing that point, Republicans said they hoped to convey that Mr. Bush’s ascent to the White House was inevitable — and that sore losers in the vice president’s camp were trying to steal the election from him.” [The New York Times, 11/9/2000]

“Mr. Bush’s advisers accused the Gore campaign of playing fast and loose with the facts of the disputed vote in Florida, and they came to a news conference here armed with voter registration statistics, visual aids and pointed implications that Vice President Al Gore and his allies were acting like sore losers.” [The New York Times, 11/10/2000]

“In announcing that they would contest election results in Miami-Dade County (and perhaps elsewhere) in court, as allowed under Florida law, Mr. Gore’s lawyers risked making Mr. Gore look, at least in legal terms, like the one thing he had struggled for days not to be seen as: a sore loser.” [The New York Times, 11/24/2000]

“In blunt, often brutal language reminiscent of the rhetoric aimed at President Clinton during his impeachment and trial, Gore is portrayed as a win-at-any-cost sore loser with a penchant for lying and a death wish for his party.” [The Washington Post, 11/30/2000]

“Republicans are already undertaking a public relations counteroffensive that will portray Gore as the ultimate sore loser.” [The Washington Post, 11/27/2000]

He doesn’t say exactly how many times Coleman’s been called “sore loser,” but a quick search of the Lexis database shows a couple dozen occurrences at the most — fewer if you count only major media. (Several “sore losers” appear in conservative contexts, with real or implied quotation marks around the epithet.)

And the list leaves out the clever “Sore Loserman“ subvertisement for “Gore-Lieberman.”

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