Re: Al Gore's support of the Internet, by V.Cerf and B.Kahn

[Seth Finkelstein <sethf@MIT.EDU>]

> Declan McCullagh <lists@POLITECHBOT.COM>
> If there was no story in Al Gore's boast, other journalists would have
> simply ignored it.

        You're kidding. This is like 
they-wouldn't-print-it-if-it-weren't-true.

> But there is -- it was a boast that stretched the bounds of credulity.

"Whatever imprecision may have existed in Gore's original comment, it
 paled beside the distortions of what Gore clearly meant. While
 excoriating Gore's phrasing as an exaggeration, the media engaged in
 its own exaggeration.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0004.parry.html

"In particular, if we have to choose whether it was Gore or Wired News
 who engaged in "exaggeration", I think that Wired News would
 clearly be the winner." [Phil Agre]

http://listserv.syr.edu/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0005&L=foi-l&O=A&P=8699

> In my story, I didn't do what a anti-Gore partisan would have done
> and included mention of Gore's other alleged fabrications.

        Umm, you did that in the follow-up story. You were saying?

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,18655,00.html

"Hundreds of articles were quick to appear, many drawing
 the inevitable comparisons to Gore's other gaffes.

 A Washington Times columnist remembered that Gore took credit for
 inspiring the tough-guy hero in Erich Segal's novel Love Story. Segal
 denied it, saying that Gore's Harvard roommate, actor Tommy Lee
 Jones, was the role model."

        See http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/0004.parry.html
again, for the debunking.

> In fact, my article
> (http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/18390.html) was
> actually more light-hearted than not.

        That's not what you say when you are touting it to people in
your biography.

http://www.is2k.harvard.edu/_home/people/con_participants/con_participants.htm#mccullagh

"... and was the first to break the story about Vice President Gore
claiming to have invented the Internet." (again, Declan writes this himself)

> If anyone here is insane enough to think that I'm a "right-winger,"
> they don't really deserve a response, but I figured that I'd be
> charitable for a moment.

        I think "Libertarian propagandist" is more precise.

http://hotwired.com/synapse/feature/97/36/mccullagh4a_1.html
In Defense of Libertarianism
by Declan McCullagh (declan@well.com) and Solveig Singleton (sberns@cato.org)

        Your notorious dogmatism here has elevated you to a symbol:

"Declan is poster boy for auto-pilot libertarianism as a response to any
given Net-related socio-political issue."
Donald Weightman    http://www.egroups.com/message/cyberia-l/24617

> Finally, I note, as I did in my column on Saturday
> (http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,39172,00.html) that
> Democratic partisans are rallying to defend Al. Not much time left
> before the election, small surprise.

        Here we go again with the ad-hominems. You're a Libertarian
partisan, but that's not why what you wrote is wrong (as opposed to
why you wrote it :-( ). What is *factually incorrect* in what these
"Democratic partisans" claim? You don't say, but rather write:

"But, for some odd reason, they don't claim that Gore invented the Internet.

        Because he never claimed it. You stuck that "paraphrase" in his
mouth.

http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.Al.Gore.and.the.Inte.html

        Sigh. Why do I bother?

__
Seth Finkelstein  Consulting Programmer  sethf@sethf.com  http://sethf.com