NEW YORK Let's begin with a brief case study in how the cynical, superficial American media (that's us) can distort the lives of political figures and their families. We are talking with Karenna Gore Schiff about her new book, "Lighting the Way: Nine Women Who Changed Modern America." The smart, personable 32-year-old daughter of the Man Who Was Almost President tells us she wrote it as a kind of therapy, an antidote to the "punched-in-the-gut" feeling she got whenever she looked at the newspaper after the 2000 election.