Who built Hadrian's wall?
Hadrian(trick question, I know)
Who built the autobahns?
Hitler
Who built the Panama Canal?
Teddy Roosevelt
Who built the Hoover Dam and the TVA?
FDR
Who got us to the moon?
JFK
Who built the interstates?
Eisenhower
Who built the internet?
I'm just trying to find a way to destroy the "Gore invented the internet" crap the media has forced down our throat.
We have to stop apologizing for Gore and instead start saying, "He was right!" If you apologize for Gore's phrasing, you are just giving in to the meme, and it is a very short jump from regretting phrasing to admitting parsing, and we all know where that leads.
The double standard used to screw Gore drives me into shrill unholy madness quite frequently. The inventing the internet crap is just the most well known example.
Here, let me demonstrate the double standard. Our local county judge retired this year after 14 years. The speaker who introduced him at the retirement dinner credited him with removing all the wooden bridges in Faulkner County. Now, Judge Carter is a great big bear of a man, and 14 years is a good long time, but gosh, when I heard what he had done, I thought what a remarkable thing for one man to tear down every single wooden bridge in the county with his bare hands. Sheeee-it boys. Judge Carter must be one bad dude, huh?
Except we all really know that when a politician is credited with, or takes credit for, bridges, levees, roads, ports, stadiums, or any other sort of public infrastructure, the pol in question is not claiming to have done the actual work himself. Aside from golden shovels (golden keyboard anyone?), pols do not get their hands dirty with such. No one ever, ever misunderstands this, and no one ever, ever quibbles with the phrasing of such claims except in the case of Al Gore.
Now the internet is probably more like a port, airport, or stadium (as opposed to roads or bridges) in that it was initially built with public funds, but is now managed by private or semiprivate entities. But it is an element of public infrastructure just the same.
But Gore is continually excoriated for claiming credit for building an element of public infrastructure, in a way that no other politician has ever been. The only way to explain this is the double standard used by the press.
The truth has to be repeated as often as the lies, but we should not worry about our phrasing, except in that we should be as direct and explicit as possible. We should not shrink from stating the truth as simply and clearly as possible.
Republicans build bridges to nowhere. When J.C.R. Licklider of DARPA went to Congress to get the money to turn the bitnet into the internet, Gore is the congressman who got it done. Gore built the internet, and that's just the truth. We have to throw this back in the face of the press. No apologies, no phrasing, no parsing, just the honest truth.