McCain adviser: BlackBerry a ‘miracle’ he ‘helped create’
Good thing Al Gore already invented the Internet, or McCain wouldn’t have anywhere to connect his invention… :rolleyes:
[Cynic]
Calculated comment designed to bolster McCain’s technology image. Regardless of the fallout, it plants the connection between McCain and a high-tech device. The claim itself can be downplayed (e.g., – even if McCain merely took part in legislation/whatever to allow Blackberry’s communications to take place, it did forward progress; Gore said similar things (or similar things were attributed to him); it was just a staffer saying it, so it doesn’t really count…)
[/cynic]
How’d that work out for Gore? 
And we all know how well received Gore’s claims were, verifiable or not.
The phrase “BWA HA HA HA!” rings a bell.
That’s only the humorous part of that quote. The truly chilling portion is this:
Like horse show judges, perhaps?
I can’t imagine that this was a well-thought out or planned comment. It’s just too similar to the (erroneous) claims about Al Gore’s statement, and too poorly timed with the growing narrative that McCain (at least during this campaign) is a pathological liar. It can only play out very poorly for him, in my opinion.
There’s a pit thread already on this, and it cites an AP article in which the reporter actually, you know, got the joke.
I KNEW he should have chosen Jon Lovitz as his running mate!
Got what joke? The McCain staffer held up a Blackberry and said “You’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create.”
But he was just joking? Knowing the flack that Al Gore took when he made similar claims about the Internet? Also knowing that the man he works for is in a race for the White House and this type of “joke” probably doesn’t come across as “funny,” except in that people are now laughing at his boss?
Although, I do agree that the reporter, you know “got the joke,” except the joke isn’t on Al Gore and the Democrats-- it’s on the McCain campaign.
ETA: This isn’t an issue, nor should it be made an issue; it’s just a really really bone-headed mistake by a ranking McCampaign official.
I was thinking of Dick Cheney’s energy task force.
Oh, well, none-out-of-three ain’t bad.
That seems like a pretty innocuous statement to me. It is impossible for a person to be a policy expert at everything. Having a President that is a micromanager sounds like a recipe for disaster. In fact, one of my favorite things about Barack Obama is that he seems like the kind of person that will try to pick the best qualified advisors.
Right, but this is a bit different. It’s an adviser, not Gore himself (though I’m not sure of the original story or whether Gore actually said it or it was just attributed to him).
It’s something smaller than the Internet, so it doesn’t have the appearance of such a bold claim. It’s even smaller than Hillary’s sniper story.
It’s not going to lead any story, especially since it is one of several exaggerations and whatnot of the McCain (and polititians in general) campaign – but it will get some people talking about it.
It is defensible as a joke, it may be defensible as I noted above, in that McCain worked on legislation that helped Blackberry achieve success, or some other way.
That, then is why I cynically thought it a calculated, planned, and highly considered remark. Even in defending it, McCain is tied to a high-tech device. Even assuming that the kerfuffle dies in short order, even if no one ever really believes McCain actually created the Blackberry, the idea that he had something to do with its creation – irrespective of reality – is out there.
The timing so close to the McCain can’t use a computer ad is just to much for this cynic to think of this as anything more than a marketing play.
Here’s the story of Gore’s “claim” that he invented the internet. Gore was actually claiming that he helped pave the way for the internet as we know it, through legislation and general support. Instead of remembering Gore for that, though, people generally just make fun of him for “claiming he invented the internet.”
Okay…
I would actually like to think that they meant this. It would reveal the depths of their incompetence and make me even more hopeful for November.
Here’s the thing, though: I read a goodly chunk of the 500+ comments on cnn.com’s Political Ticker reporting this story, and a very large fraction of the people snickering about it made this sort of comment: “He can’t even do email and he claims he invented the BlackBerry? Get out!” I don’t see it as helping McCain at all with the “just doesn’t get modern technology” image.
(Thanks for the link C3)
I’m fascinated that we’re coming to opposite conclusions. That is, to me if it was just an off-the-cuff remark without any intent behind it, then that would reveal a measure of incompetence. But this to me seems yet another Rove-esque media play, one crafted to avoid the general derision cast on Gore while still connecting McCain to technology.
(missed edit window)
BTW, my comments are directed at the political chess match, not the bowl of steaming bullshit being served. If I compare this move to, say, recasting fundamentals of the economy as workers of America (“There’s nothing wrong with the workers of America,’’ he said. “I believe that they’re the fundamentals. You may not, others may not.”), I find the former a much more nuanced lie. As for the effectiveness of the two, it depends on which gets repeated more.
It’d be sweet though, to have a president who has the demonstrated ability to be an expert at something. The ignorant-generalist-in-chief and his circle-of grey-haired-advisors of the past eight years has not been an American success story.
Presumably this is a reference to Bush picking Michael Brown to head FEMA.
But that’s inaccurate: Michael Brown was Commissioner of the IAHA Judges & Stewards Committee. He was not, to my knowledge, a horse show Judge himself. At least, I don’t recall seeing him judge any major Arabian horse shows.
Actual quote " “Telecommunications in the United States, the premiere innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create. And that’s what he did.”
And here’s what Gore actually said "I’ll be offering my vision when my campaign begins. And it will be comprehensive and sweeping. And I hope that it will be compelling enough to draw people toward it. I feel that it will be. But it will emerge from my dialogue with the American people. I’ve traveled to every part of this country during the last six years. 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."
From wiki "*UCLA professor of information studies, Philip E. Agre and journalist Eric Boehlert argued that three articles in Wired News led to the creation of the widely spread urban legend that Gore claimed to have “invented the Internet,” which followed this interview.[91][92][93] In addition, computer professionals and congressional colleagues argued in his defense. Internet pioneers Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn stated that “we don’t think, as some people have argued, that Gore intended to claim he ‘invented’ the Internet. Moreover, there is no question in our minds that while serving as Senator, Gore’s initiatives had a significant and beneficial effect on the still-evolving Internet.”[94][92] Cerf would also later state: “Al Gore had seen what happened with the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956, which his father introduced as a military bill. It was very powerful. Housing went up, suburban boom happened, everybody became mobile. Al was attuned to the power of networking much more than any of his elective colleagues. His initiatives led directly to the commercialization of the Internet. So he really does deserve credit.”[95] Former Republican Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Newt Gingrich also stated: “In all fairness, it’s something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is – and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a “futures group” – the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the '80s began to actually happen.”[96] Finally, Wolf Blitzer (who conducted the original 1999 interview) stated in 2008 that: “I didn’t ask him about the Internet. I asked him about the differences he had with Bill Bradley […] Honestly, at the time, when he said it, it didn’t dawn on me that this was going to have the impact that it wound up having, because it was distorted to a certain degree and people said they took what he said, which was a carefully phrased comment about taking the initiative and creating the Internet to – I invented the Internet. And that was the sort of shorthand, the way his enemies projected it and it wound up being a devastating setback to him and it hurt him, as I’m sure he acknowledges to this very day.”[97]
Gore, himself, would later poke fun at the controversy. In 2000, while on the The Late Show with David Letterman he read Letterman’s Top 10 List (which for this show was called, “Top Ten Rejected Gore - Lieberman Campaign Slogans”) to the audience. Number nine on the list was: “Remember, America, I gave you the Internet, and I can take it away!”[98] A few years later in 2005, when Gore was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award “for three decades of contributions to the Internet” at the Webby Awards[99][100] he joked in his acceptance speech (limited to five words according to Webby Awards rules): “Please don’t recount this vote.” He was introduced by Vint Cerf who used the same format to joke: “We all invented the Internet.” Gore, who was then asked to add a few more words to his speech, stated: “It is time to reinvent the Internet for all of us to make it more robust and much more accessible and use it to reinvigorate our democracy.”[100]"*