Sometimes, even when they do have all the facts, their decision to call a rumor "false" vs. "sort of true" can be arbitrary. Take, for example, this entry which, at a glance, purports to debunk the claim that Al Gore said he invented the Internet. Only if you read well past the "false" ruling do you learn that the only thing false about it is the use of the wrong verb: he didn't falsely claim to have "invented" the Internet, he falsely claimed to have "created" it.

My response to them is here. If you disagree, do as I did and send them a comment.

he didn't falsely claim to have "invented" the Internet, he falsely claimed to have "created" it.

And the truth of the matter is he did neither.

You're both lying. What Gore said was as Senator, he took the initiative to create the Internet. or something very close to that. The meaning of that is entirely different, as you both surely must know since you only bothered to quote half his sentence.

You may disagree with whether or not he did, but you'd be at odds with Vincent "the father of the Internet" Cerf, as well as noted Democratic partisan Newt Gingrich.

From a legislator's standpoint, there is very little difference, if any, between "taking initiative in creating" something and "creating" it outright. Legislators don't literally "create" anything with their own bare hands; they work to pass laws to fund them. I thought that was obvious, so I quoted half the sentence to keep the comment size down. Sorry if, in your case, the obvious wasn't obvious enough.

The real point, which you (deliberately?) missed, is that Gore neither created, nor invented, nor took any initiative in creating the Internet. Nor should be be expected to have done so, being only 14 when the DoD first started work on it in 1962, and 21 when they completed it in 1969. He wasn't even elected to Congress until eight years after that (1977), and his tenure in the Senate didn't begin until eight more years after that. Once there, AFAIK the only Internet-related initiative he took was his sponsorship of the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in 1991. That law may have made Vincent Cerf a very happy man, but it does not make Al Gore's ludicrous claim any less ludicrous. There simply is no way to "take initiative in creating" something that has already been around for 22 years.

With all due respect, Addie, I did not "lie," and do not appreciate being accused of that for no reason. To save time, I might also point out that my pants are not on fire, either. Come back if/when you grow up, and we can continue the discussion then.

Meanwhile, returning to the original subject, here's a link suggesting that the Syrian Wayne Newton is not the Syrian Wayne Newton.

Let me quote a Washington Post article from 1988. Yes, that's 1988, long before you ever heard of Al gore OR the Internet:

American computing scientists are campaigning for the creation of a “superhighway” which would revolutionise data transmission.

Legislation has already been laid before Congress by Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee, calling for government funds to help establish the new network, which scientists say they can have working within five years, at a cost of Dollars 400 million.

LIAR LIAR LIAR!

Addie, I'm no candidate for membership in the Xrlq fan club, but my experience is that he is someone you can have a civilized disagreement with, especially if you keep up your civilized end, so to speak. He's smart and has a lot of respect for facts. I would drop the "liar" bit. You're not helping yourself with it.

Offered with the best intentions.

You're right Tim, there are times for civilized disagreement, but this isn't one of them. The Gore-Internet myth has long been debunked as nonsense and anybody who can cite the High Performance Computing and Communications Act in 1991 must surely know it.

Tim: thanks for the kind words

Addie: you're not winning any points here by continuing to eschew civil debate and act like a jerk. Aside from the minor semantic details I've pointed out already, there is no "myth" here to debunk. 1988 may have been long before you had heard of Al Gore or the Internet, and it may also have been a few years before the Washington Post got up to speed on its history, but that doesn't change the fact that it was 19 years after the Internet was created, and 26 years after any real "initiative" had been taken in creating it. So the Washington Post claimed in 1988 that the Internet was about to be created. Big deal. Journalists screw up like that all the time. Few people outside the .EDU and .MIL domains knew back then that there was such a thing as the Internet. That doesn't change the fact that it was there.

For what it's worth, I first heard of the Internet in early 1988, although it wasn't until 1991 that I first heard it called by that name or used it myself on a regular basis. I heard of Al Gore several years earlier, thanks to his wife's infamous censorship drive.

Thus far, you've wrong about Al Gore, wrong about the history of the Internet, wrong about my honesty, wrong about David Ehrenstein's honesty (and, I suspect, about his intent, as well), wrong about when I first heard of the Internet, and wrong about when I first heard of Al Gore. I'm not sure there's a single level at which you could possibly have been wrong, but weren't. Nevertheless, I have not stooped to your level and called you a liar, or even an idiot. Imagine that.

Ok, Mr Myxlplix, I really knew you heard of Al Gore in 1988 because he was a candidate for prresident. It was a successful attempt to rile you.

But now let me quote noted Democratic apologist Newt Gingrich from 2000:

"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."

Now Gore may have been boastful, a point I concede and his lanugage may have been imprecise (it WAS a spontaneous comment, after all) but unless you think (quite ridiculously) that he was trying to tell people he actually BUILT the Internet in his basement with some wires and a screwdriver, then yes, his comments are fair and represenntative of the truth.

I apologize for calling you a liar. You're like the presidentt and his weapons of mass destruction. You didn't know better. But now that you do, I'll assume you'll stop spreading such nonsense. Any future comments WILL be considered lies.

You seem to be having trouble seeing the forest for the trees, so let me make this REALLY simple: you can't "invent," "create" or "take an initiative in creating" something that already exists. Some Congressmen did indeed "take initiative in creating the Internet," by voting to fund ARPANet back in 1962 and continuing to fund it until it was up and running in 1969. Al Gore, Jr. was not one of those Congressmen.

No one disputes that Senator Al Gore, Jr. took initiative to promote the Internet in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Unfortunately, a few years after that, he also took a somewhat less noble initiative in the opposite direction by pushing hard for the ill-conceived "Clipper" chip that would have done to Internet privacy what his wife's PMRC had done to the music industry a decade earlier.

Ultimately, the 1991 law passed and Clipper was abandoned, so on balance, Gore turned out to be a net positive for the Internet. But accurately claiming to have promoted the Internet and expanded in in new and exciting ways (TM) is one thing, and falsely claiming to have played a role in bringing it about - whether as a legislator, or otherwise - is quite another.

Originally, you wrote off the Internet's pre-Gore existence as another "lie." Now, it's apparently not a lie anymore, just an innocent misstatement attributable to the remark being off the cuff. Sorry, I'm not buying it. Everybody misspeaks from time to time, but the usual response to a blooper like that would to correct it immediately, or maybe even make a little joke out of it. Instead he simply said it, patted himself on the back for his grossly overstated accomplishment, and moved on.

What that says to me is that by 1999, Al Gore knew full well that the Internet had been around long before his political career began, but figured that most Americans - apparently including Wolf Blitzer at the time - did not. To the average joe, there was no such thing as an Internet until 1995 or so, so hey, why not claim to be the visionary in Congress who made it all possible?

Sorry if reciting facts that do not fit your agenda makes me a "liar" in your book. You do seem quite fond of that word. Does it work for everything, or just for political discussions? Next time a doctor tells you you're sick, maybe rather than seeking treatment, you should just accuse him of lying.

Mr. Myxlplix, what exactly is your beef? That Gore didn't say "I took the initiative in creating the Internet AS WE KNOW IT?"

Ok, I'm a reasonable man. I can live with that. He helped pave the way for the modern Internet, instead of a collection of five computers at MIT and UCLA.

But now that I've visited your Web site I see your one of those people I'd rather not associate with. So, alas, this will be my last post. Feel free to have the last word, although I won't be back to see it. I'll be in the shower.

But you know what? When you first said he claimed to have simply invented the Internet when you knew he actually said several words more than that? That's not only lying, it's intellectually dishonest and it stinks of partisan hackery.

Thanks Mr. X and Mr. A for the amusing exchange. Off-topic, but high-spirited.

Um, Mr. A, there may be a hole in your argument. Readers can follow the link to the Snopes entry that Mr. X offered. It seems to read as Mr. X says it reads.