On Apr 17, 2008, at 6:25 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Jim wrote: >> >> Fact-checking takes time, and editors must be paid, so accurate >> reporting is >> time- and labor-intensive. Today's blogosphere, which rewards >> unschooled >> right-wing loudmouths who spew half-truths and worse, has no >> interest in >> that. > > To be truthful, and after all isn't that what we all want, this is > not limited only to the right wing blogoshpere, nor the right wing > as a whole.
Evidently it extends to people on this list. > There are many on the left who are rewarded quite handsomely for > publishing their half truths and lies. Film makers who produce > alleged documentaries and former Vice Presidents who claim to have > invented the Internet For the benefit of those outside the USA, the reference is to Al Gore, who when he was vice president of the United States, told Wolf Blitzer of CNN in a March 9, 1999 interview: "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." This is a statement that, as a legislator, he had pushed for creation of the internet, not a statement that he personally invented it. But it was very deliberately mischaracterized by Gore's political enemies (of which he soon had many, since he was running for president) who said, obviously without quoting what Gore actually said (just as Craig did here), that Gore claimed to have invented the internet. This was, alas, not confined to the blogosphere. Americans are not sophisticated consumers of information, and are easily lied to. Oddly enough, Gore did say he personally invented an instrument called the continuo. Though the "Gore says he invented the internet" story is not so much an urban legend as an outright lie, it's dealt with at the Snopes.com web site, which investigates and reports on urban legends. I recommend it: http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp Sorry for the interruption. Back to lutes. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
