Al Gore’s Horse-Thief Ancestor–Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
This email claims that Tipper Gore, the wife of former Senator and presidential candidate Al Gore, is into genealogy and discovered a great-great uncle in the Gore family who was hanged as a horse thief and train robber. When the president’s image-makers were finished with the story, however, they had made the history of the great-great uncle sound like one about a terrific citizen and gave it to the Associated Press.
The Truth:
This is not true just like it was not true about Hillary Rodham Clinton or George W. Bush. The essence of this story is from an old piece of humorous writing that was designed to demonstrate how you can put “spin” on a negative story to make it sound positive. Someone altered the story to make it seem as though it was talking about an ancestor of Al Gore. Then another version got started saying it was about an ancestor of Bill Clinton. Still another focused on George W. Bush.