September 08, 2024
elpt
I Do Love a Challenge
Despite my best efforts to avoid more research on this Gore thread, all of the comments on the various posts have driven me to further dig up some stuff. For example, on the tobacco issue:
TOBACCO #1
March 1, 2024; San Jose Mercury News
CLAIM: “It’s not fair to say, ‘Okay, after his sister died, he continued in the same relationship with the tobacco industry.’ I did not. I did not. I began to confront them forcefully. I don’t see the inconsistency there.”
TRUTH: The same month Gore’s sister died in 1984, he received a $1,000 speaking fee from U.S. Tobacco. The next year, he voted against cigarette and tobacco tax increases three times and favored a bill allowing major cigarette makers to purchase discounted tobacco. In the 1988 campaign, Gore bragged of his tobacco background: “I want you to know that with my own hands, all of my life, I put [tobacco] in the plant beds and transferred it. I’ve hoed it, I’ve dug in it, I’ve sprayed it, I’ve chopped it, I’ve shredded it, spiked it, put it in the barn, and stripped it and sold it” (Newsday, 2-26-88).
TOBACCO #2
March 1, 2024; San Jose Mercury News
CLAIM: “My family had grown tobacco. It was never actually grown on my farm, but it was on my father’s farm.”
TRUTH: Gore had already admitted growing tobacco on his own farm: “On my farm, we stopped growing tobacco some time after Nancy died” (Cox News Service, 4-26-99). Also, Gore received federal subsidies for growing tobacco on his farm (Wall Street Journal, 8-10-95).
While the info above has the actual citations, the source of the above is National Review..
More later... (and there is quite a bit more)
Posted by Steven Taylor at September 8, 2024 07:52 PM
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National Review, Steven? Is FreeRepublic part of the syllabus at Troy State? How 'bout NewsMax or that rag David Horowitz has?
By the way, let's just keep beating you over the head re Gore and the internet, shall we?
Here's Phil Agre on the matter (http://dlis.gseis.ucla.edu/people/pagre/). He has probably the best smackdown of the issue (http://commons.somewhere.com/rre/2000/RRE.Al.Gore.and.the.Inte1.html):
"Gore's words in a CNN interview, as quoted by Wired News, were as
follows:
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the
initiative in creating the Internet."
Gore meaning, obvious to anyone who knew the record, was that he did
the political work and articulated the public vision that made the
Internet possible. No reasonable person could conclude that Gore was
claiming to have invented the Internet in any technical sense. The
first half of his sentence makes this clear: he is talking about work
he did in the context of his service in the Congress. The creation
of the Internet was a process that had several phases and took several
years, and Gore is claiming the principal credit for the political
side of that effort. It is a substantial claim, but an accurate one."
There's more but for brevity's sake, I'll just post the highlights. Visit the link for Agre's full analysis.
"Gore's quote, having grown familiar, has now been reduced to a few
words, without the context of the first half of the sentence. The
phrase "took the initiative" is now outside of quote marks as well.
The pattern of equating "creating" and "invent[ing]" has begun to
settle in. Much more importantly, the Internet story is now coupled
with another of the now-canonical "exaggeration" stories -- the "Love
Story" story. The author's claim is false on two counts: Gore did
not make such a claim about himself and Tipper (he only told reporters
about a news article that mistakenly made such a claim), and Segal did
not contradict Gore (who was in fact one of the models for the hero
of Segal's book). The decontextualized and tendentiously paraphrased
"Internet" story is now coupled with the multiply falsified "Love
Story" story -- a pattern that will grow much more intense later on."
"Wired News' articles about Al Gore and the Internet did not simply
contribute an urban myth to American culture. They were part and
parcel of a hysterical campaign of character assassination against
an innocent man based on lies and distortions. This campaign should
bring disgrace to Wired News and all of the other media organizations
that were part of it. It should also cause sober reflection on the
corrupt state of public discourse in this country."
You undermine your argument by constantly going back to the internet quote, as if that is all you have, you haven't gone very far in dealing with the discussion in its totality. I would agree that if that was all there was, there would be no discussion.
If you are going to win this (or any other) argument, you have to be able to deal with the evidence in a rational manner.
And 1) The National Reivew, while conservative, is a top-nothch publication, but 2) as I pointed out, the quotations are sourced to major newspapers and the like.
Deal with the evidence and get back to me.
And really, the jibes and insults, while cute and all, aren't argumentation. They may make you feel better, but they do nothing to advance your position, and indeed, detract from the seriousness of your own attempt at discourse.
Furher, I would point out that the media reaction detailed in the Love Canal article makes part of my point: that even if one can debunk that particular quotation, there was already an existent context where people already had accepted the idea that Gore was an exaggerator. Cokie Robert, Ceci Connolly (sp?), and Chris Matthews are hardly a bunch of right-wingers.
Even the mis-steps point to my broader thesis.
OK Jade....
I tell what what.... I'll ask 2 "yes or no" questions.
You answer the questions with a simple YES or NO and we can get to the bottom of this.
READY? Here goes....
#1) Did Gore claim to create the internet?
#2) Did he really create the internet?
I don't know what's so bad about tobacco !! The
longest living people have smoked and the more
you smoke the Less chance of cancer so can't
blame tobacco. Must be Something Else.. I think
it is drinking water Especially now a days but
the health nuts say you Can't drink enough. They
can have mine.