LOL! Great post, elucidator!
elucidator, your posts are part of what makes life worth living. Another tour de force, mon ami.
Dewey, that horse is indeed dead, even if you’re trapped under it. Your interpretation of Gore’s statement is not reasonable, either in the context of his life or even in literary deconstruction. Nor does not represent the usual partisan-hater’s crowing of the statement “Gore says he invented the Internet!”. IOW, quit bullshitting - no one can get away with it here.
Zoe, true liberal Republicans are even harder to find than true liberal Democrats, since the success of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy”. 'Tis a pity, too - the loss of ideological mix within the parties has IMHO been the main facilitating factor in the current partisan bitterness.
Sam, you might check back and see just who started this thread. He does have the ability to put his tongue in his cheek, and so do most of the repliers here - save, apparently, yourself. Consider also that the fight against ignorance inevitably involves revealing to the ignorant their ignorance. It is in no way telling such persons that they’re bad persons, it’s simply helping them to learn about the world.
Oh, and btw, can we assume that when you say “Republicans and Democrats” you really mean “conservatives and iberals”, a subject of which you actually do have inside knowledge?
And can anyone say why Michael Moore should be called a political commentator, while P.J. O’Rourke is simply a comedian? Sam?Oh yeah, the topic: Seems to me that Republicans aren’t evil; it’s more that people more prone to selfishness, shortsightedness, hypocrisy, and vindictiveness are more likely to support political parties that cater to selfishness, shortsightedness, hypocrisy, and vindictiveness. But that doesn’t make them evil.
Doesn’t that depend on which Republicans you speak with? There seems to be a sector of the Republican party that appears to feel that Democrats are hellbound sinners, determined to drag the country into hell, one hedonistic step at a time. Very much a more “bad people” than a “bad ideas” set of arguments. This doesn’t happen that much on this board - I see more of it in real life (and other boards).
The horse may be dead, but it’s still interesting.
Gore did indeed slip up and say that he took the initiative in creating the internet. He did. It’s right there. Look. Right in the transcript. He made a verbal slip and it got thrown back in his face. Happens all the time, especially in politics.
For the record, Dewey’s interpretation of the statement is completely reasonable. His interpretation was that Gore meant to say that he helped the internet to grow. And then Dewey said that that was true. I don’t see what your objection is to it. And it was indeed Spartacus who provided the spin saying that Gore claimed he had helped to create the internet, which he did NOT say. That’s what he MEANT to say. There’s a difference.
It wasn’t just the right who accused Gore of making exaggerated claims. Most of the media said the same thing.
I think accusations against Gore were unfair. However, part of the problem is that Gore often tends to make statements that are not specific; statements capable of more than one interpretation. E.g., his recent speech to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco was widely criticized. The critics were able to find many quotes that were inappropriate. His defenders pointed out that there was an innocent or reasonable interpretation of each statement.
I think Gore could do himself some good by speaking with more precision.
From the Newt Gingrich Gopac memo, some of the words Republican candidates were advised to use when describing Democrats:[ul][li]bizarre[]corrupt[]greed[]hypocrisy[]incompetent[]intolerant[]pathetic[]self-serving[]stealtraitors[/ul][/li]
Hmm. Don’t see “evil” in there. Guess you’re right Sam. Only corrupt, self-serving Democrats would stoop so low as to demonize their opponents.
I still want to know how ** Sam ** arrived at the conclusion that “evil” = attack on person, but “stupid” = attack on ideas.
And Boris, <sniff>, 'tis a thing of beauty.
Sam, I don’t know about you but when I call someone Stupid, I mean it as a personal attack. How can calling someone stupid not be something they’d take personal? Ideas are part of what makes you you, after all.
I’d mention that although mainstream republicans don’t tend to say “Democrats are evil” (of course, I don’t see mainstream democrats saying republicans are evil much), the Christian Right isn’t exactly disinclined to doing this…
Of course, given what I’ve read of Sam Stone’s previous posts, I do wonder if he feels the same way I do of that particular group.
Are Republicans evil? Well, yes, but then again we’re all evil to some extent. Republicans tend to be more blindly patriotic then Democrats, and blind patriotism is evil. Republicans tend to support the interests of corporations, which are evil entities (pretty much by definition, since they are necessarily selfish organizations, that are not overly concerned with morality). Republicans are pushing war, although war is an obvious evil. Whether the war will benefit people is an important consideration, but the notion that the ends justify the means is arguably evil. Republicans support capital punishment, and most people would agree that revenge and killing people are two evils. Other stuff such as the war on medical marijuana, indefinite detainments, etc could quite reasonably be classified as evil.
Of course not just the Republicans support corporations. In certain circumstances, the Democrats are at the forefront of evil, with their shameless pandering to the entertainment industry (DMCA, endless copyright extensions, etc.) Plus they support just about the same things that Republicans do, so it’s not a huge difference.
I don’t think the fact that our government is evil should be surprising. Even on this message board, when idealists say that our foreign policy should be a little more morally correct, the typical response is “everyone else does it, grow up- this is the way the world works”. Maybe so. But it’s still evil.
Well, at least your bias is clear (and your facts muddled–the person making the claim is a he, not a she):
Dewey, I’m also a reader of Wired and Slashdot, and both have done interviews with the guys who technically did turn the Arpanet into the internet, and they credit Gore with being the only politician who understood what they were doing, and the only politician who really carried the ball on getting the funding. Gore did not say that he “invented” the internet, but that he took the initiative in “creating” it, which is absolutely true. We had Arpanet, BBSes, email, etc. for years, I was familiar with all of them back in the 70s, before Tipper thought rock and roll was evil. Al Gore sponsored and carried legislation creating the internet, and used the correct terminology in describing his contribution. Republicans (and their corporate owned media) lied about what he had said in order to cover the fact that they were running a three time loser who deserted the Air Guard to do drugs against the guy responsible for jump starting the internet. It was Big Lie, over, and over. And it was evil. And it is still evil.
Bingo. If he can be accused of anything at all, it’s of not extending the sentence to include the words “as we know it today”.
Gore’s rep as a liar is itself a lie, of the grossest sort.
Well, yes, emarkup, I clearly am a liberal democrat. My recollection of the story when I saw it on the net last July was that it was a woman. Upon seeing that it was a man, I’ve done a little more web research than just snopes, and it confirms that a Philly Free Lance writer named Bill Hangley confirms that he wrote the article, and that Bush said exactly those words to him at a specified time and place. There is no indication that either Hangley or Bush were not at that place at that time and that they did not meet. Bush has not denied saying the statement.
[Lord Voldemort]There is no Good and Evil… there is only power, and those to weak to seek it!
BWAHAHAHAAAaaa!
[/Lord Voldemort]
And while we are on the hijack of Bill Hangley, Jr. here are some of his other writings. A boring academic.
OH YEAH?!?!
I ATE A BABYYYYYY!!!
I know I said I wouldn’t post here again, but I’m a Democrat and we are all liars. Here’s the difinitive answer: Googlefight!
Republicans are evil-- 193 hits
Democrats are evil-- 89 hits
and just for the record
Democrats are stupid-- 45 hits
Republicans are stupid-- 75 hits
So there you have it. Republicans are evil and stupid.
Well, yes. So what? Gore helped secure funding that expanded the Internet’s infrastructure. That’s a good thing, and he deserves credit for it. But that isn’t “creation” by any stretch, any more than a politician who gets major higway funding can be said to “create” the interstate highway system. **
No, it isn’t. The subbing of “invention” for “creation” may be sloppy quotation, but it doesn’t misdescribe what Gore said; in this context, there isn’t a meaningful difference between “invention” and “creation” – saying Alexander Graham Bell “invented” the telephone is not terribly far afield from saying Mr. Bell “created” the telephone.**
**Ah, no. The thing we call the “internet” can indeed be said to have begun with many different things – Arpanet itself, email, newsgroups; perhaps the best spot to pick would be the 1982 finalization of the TCP/IP protocol, or maybe the 1984 establishment of the DNS system. Or perhaps the web – established, thanks to Tim Berners-Lee’s efforts at CERN, in 1991. But none of these things are traceable to Gore’s legislation.
Gore’s legislation allowed the addition of many more hosts on the internet and improved the internet’s infrastructure. It improved the internet a great deal. But it didn’t “create” anything.**
Well, at least you’ve returned to the OP.
It wasn’t a lie, nor was it evil. It was the use of a sloppy statement by a candidate against that candidate. That is part and parcel of American politics. And potatoe farming.
Well, that would be a kind of crucial addition, seeing how it changes the whole meaning of the sentence and all. :rolleyes:
(And, as noted, even that would be an arguable statement)
Please, Dewey, the whole point of Sparticus’s statement was that to take a misstatement (“sloppy,” in your way of putting it) and brand the speaker of it a liar when you know his intent was benign and his story essentially true is itself dishonest. If dishonesty is “part and parcel of American politics” as you say, it’s only because dishonest people are willing to accept it and exploit it.
Geezer
The broad mass of a nation . . . will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.
– Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf