[Am-info] Down the River

[ethical@1of1.net]

In a message dated 2001 November 03 (Saturday), timestamp 11:40 AM, 
   on the topic Re: [Am-info] Down the River,
   Geoffrey <esoteric@denali.atlnet.com> wrote:

"|Mark Hinds wrote:
"|> How can one be dissappointed by a predictable outcome
"|> such as this? If one voted for bush then one voted for
"|> this outcome.
"|> 
"|> I voted for Gore because he had the brass to stand up at
"|> the MS campus and tell employees that he supported anti-trust
"|> enforcement.

"|Yeah, and he also created the internet.  

A vile and base canard, and one that it is beneath you to repeat. 
>From the dubious quotations section of www.snopes2.com, the Urban
Legends site:  

Claim:   Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the
Internet.

Status:   False.

Origins:   No, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor
did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The
derisive "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs are
misleading distortions of something he said (taken out of context)
during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program
on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from
his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator
Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):

    "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the 
    initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in  
    moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to  
    be important to our country's economic growth and environmental 
    protection, improvements in our educational system." 

Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and self-serving), he
was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of
having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible for
helping to create the environment (in an economic and legislative
sense) that fostered the development of the Internet. Al Gore might
not know nearly as much about the Internet and other technologies as
his image would have us believe, and he certainly has been guilty of
stretching (if not outright breaking) the truth before, but to believe
that Gore seriously thought he could take credit for the "invention"
of the Internet -- in the sense offered by the media -- is just silly.
(To those who say the words "create" and "invent" mean the same thing:
If they mean the same thing, then why have the media overwhelmingly
and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he "invented" the
Internet when he never used that word? The answer is that the words
don't mean the same thing, but by substituting one word for the other,
commentators can make Gore's claim sound [more] ridiculous.)


-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
T. Guilbert  
"Ethical at One of One dot Net"
Portland, Oregon, United States of America
-----------------------------------------------------------