When Al Gore took credit for helping invent the Internet, it was not the first story he told. There was also the claim that he and Tipper had inspired Love Story; the insistence after his sister's death of lung cancer that he would fight smoking 'until his last breath', when in fact he continued to cash checks from family tobacco holdings; the 'no controlling legal authority' fiasco; and other tall tales. Nationally syndicated columnist Debra Saunders sees Gore's attempt to create a more exciting self as consistent with his attempts to prove himself as a 'cutting edge' diagnostician of our social ills. "Whether posing as the eco-guru battling 'consumptionism'," she writes, "or the social theorist with a 'Liveability Agenda' calling for federally sanctioned communities, attacking the automobile as the scourge of civilisation, and proposing universal pre-school, Al Gore is a unique figure on our political scene."