Gore Suffers System Error During Debate

Washington (NBp) - Vice President Al Gore, facing off against Bill Bradley in yet another debate leading up to the New Hampshire primary, suffered a system error while trying to answer a particularly tricky question. Despite having recently had software installed that was to allow for easy recovering from crashed processes, Gore was completely unresponsive until his wife, Tipper, came on stage and pressed the reset button behind his ear.

Photo of Vice President Gore's left arm-mounted screen

At first, it had appeared that Gore was considering how to phrase his answer. However, Gore did not move or blink for a full two minutes before Tipper came out to investigate. His arm-mounted status display reported that he had suffered a system error in the debate module of the language program. It is rumored that Gore had recently upgraded the debate module to handle the two debates per week schedule that he was proposing.

After Gore was brought back online, the audience waited in breathless anticipation as the moderator posed the question again. This time, Gore's debate module functioned perfectly and provided the answer, "The President's inactions are not to be condoned or punished by anyone other than the American people and the President's family. Further, I really think we should stick to the issues and not these non-issues that never seem to stop failing to not come up."

Gore is expected to make a full recovery, because his technical support crew is currently working to ensure that this problem does not crop up again.