Quick Fact: Morris revives Al Gore "invented the Internet" and Love Story smears
On Fox & Friends, Dick Morris again falsely suggested that Al Gore said he "invented the Internet" and that "he's the guy after whom [Erich Segal's 1970 romance novel] Love Story was written." Contrary to Morris' suggestion, Gore never said he "invented the Internet" or claimed that Love Story was written about him.
Please upgrade your flash player. The video for this item requires a newer version of Flash Player. If you are unable to install flash you can download a QuickTime version of the video.
Morris suggests Gore said he "invented the Internet" and that Love Story is based on him
From the December 16 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:
STEVE DOOCY (co-host): All right, an inconvenient truth emerging for former Vice President Al Gore when he tried to deliver a glacial warning about the Arctic at the Copenhagen climate conference. Listen.
GORE [video clip]: There's a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar icecap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.
DOOCY: Really?
MARTHA MacCALLUM (co-host): Well, the climatologist who Gore cited challenged his claim. He told the London Times, quote, "It is unclear to me how he arrived at this figure. I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this." End quote. So that's a little problematic for the former vice president. Dick Morris, what do you think about that?
MORRIS: Well, you know, Gore is the guy that invented the Internet and he's the guy after whom Love Story was written. You know, we've got some whoppers there.
MacCALLUM: Seventy-five percent of Love Story. That's all.
FACT: Gore never said he "invented the Internet"
Gore said he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" while in Congress. During the March 9, 1999, interview on CNN's Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer that gave rise to the myth, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." Wolf Blitzer set the record straight on the July 6, 2008, edition of CNN's Reliable Sources, stating that Gore "never said, 'I invented the Internet.' "
Gingrich also said Gore "most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.' " In a September 22, 2000, article, the Los Angeles Times reported: "Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House and a Republican who is no friend of the Gore campaign, said earlier this month, 'Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.' "
FACT: Gore never claimed Love Story is based on him
Gore attributed the claim to a newspaper article he had read, and was misquoted. According to a December 14, 1997, New York Times article, Segal "knocked down" a report in Time magazine that asserted that Gore, while on the campaign trail, "spent two hours swapping opinions about movies and telling stories about old chums like Erich Segal, who, Gore said, used Al and Tipper as models for the uptight preppy and his free-spirited girlfriend in 'Love Story.' '' From the article:
The Time magazine article about the Vice President included this passage: ''Around midnight, after a three-city tour of Texas last month, the Vice President came wandering back to the press compartment of Air Force Two. Sliding behind a table with the two reporters covering him that day, he picked slices of fruit from their plates and spent two hours swapping opinions about movies and telling stories about old chums like Erich Segal, who, Gore said, used Al and Tipper as models for the uptight preppy and his free-spirited girlfriend in 'Love Story.' ''
[...]
In their phone conversation a few days ago, Mr. Gore reminded Mr. Segal that while Mr. Segal was on his book tour for ''Love Story,'' a reporter for The Nashville Tennessean who knew that Mr. Gore and the author were friends had asked if there was not a little bit of Al Gore in Oliver Barrett. Mr. Segal said yes, there was, but the reporter ''just exaggerated,'' Mr. Segal said. ''He made it to be the local-hero angle.''
Mr. Segal said the Vice President told him that all he had said on the plane was that the article had made the connection -- and got it wrong.
''Al said, 'I didn't say that' about being the model,'' Mr. Segal said.
''Al attributed it to the newspaper, he talked about the newspaper,'' Mr. Segal said at another point in the interview. ''They conveniently omitted that part. Time thought it was more piquant to leave that out. He was talking on the plane off the record, a drink with the boys after a tiring day. I don't think he will be reminiscing much anymore.''
Sean Wilentz: "Gore never made the claim." In a November 30, 2002, The American Prospect article about political "pseudo-scandals," Princeton history professor Sean Wilentz wrote that Gore "never made the claim." From the article:
Schmoozing one night about the movies with two Time reporters, Gore had mentioned an interview, reported in the Nashville Tennessean, in which Segal claimed that Gore and Tipper were the models for his story. There was such an interview, but the Nashville reporter misquoted Segal, who actually said that Al, and not Tipper, had served as one of his models. Gore had no way of knowing that Segal had been misquoted. And so Segal, when contacted by Time, did not "contradict" Gore but instead corrected the Tennessean's mistake. Segal later observed that "Al attributed [the story] to a newspaper. Time thought it was more piquant to leave that out." Yet supposedly objective reporters and commentators, as well as Republican officials, continued to cite the Love Story pseudo-scandal as yet another example of Gore "bragging" and "inflating his past."
Morris has advanced these smears in the past
Morris repeated smear during 2008 presidential campaign. During the March 24, 2008, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, after asserting, "[Hillary Clinton is] always saying this stuff that isn't true ... and she gets nailed," Morris stated: "It's like Al Gore, 'I invented the Internet,' Love Story was about me.'"
I can't even type that without a big grin spreading across my face.
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!
Did any of you doubleplusgood proles find time to actually read through the damning CRU e-mails? No, not just the ones that MMFA thought that they had a fighting chance to defend. I'm talikng about the really damaging ones. No? Thought not. If you had, you would have found an e-mail thread where it was revealed that the charlatons at CRU got funding from Shell, BP and a nuclear waste disposal company among many other interested parties. They were also soliciting funding from, wait, no it can't be, yes it is so- they also solicited funding from ESSO, a division of Exxon Mobil (evil incarnate to you). So ,let me get this straight, Big Climate Alarmists got funded by Big Government, Big Oil and Big Nuclear Waste disposal companies all at the same time. Hehehehehehehe! It would seem that a lot of these companies are playing both sides of the fence.
This kind of duplicity doesn't surprise me given the amount of money that can be siphoned from the tax payer by way of mandates, subsidies, grants and favorable legislation( not to mention power attainment by the political and bureaucratic classes). The High Priest of the Settled Science Set, Al Gore, signed away the oil drilling rights of the Kitanemuk Indians, to Occidental Petroleum. I wonder why the greenies don't publicize this? The same thing happened to the U'wa tribe in Columbia. And Gore's interest is more than administrative: his father was into oil, and so is Gore. He received a handsome annual royalty from Occidental for mining rights, right up until he was found-out; then, and only then, did he sell the mine. The reason both Clinton and Gore gave away Indian land to 'Big Oil' was that Occidental gave huge funds to the democrats. Nothing to do with being green!
Now I see that Mr. Gore has found a new racket( when he isn't running from those who wish to debate him in a public forum), whereby, he can reap huge profits by way of mandates, subsidies, and carbon-credit trading schemes that he either started or invested in. This isn't free market- it is corporatism through and through. Nice!
Yes. So did the AP. Tell us what they found.
It may have topped his "anti-tiger rock" logic.
I wonder whose credibility is least in question - yours or the scientists who could have come down with any judgment about the emails in question?
Sorry, you lose.
And BTW... There have been 10x as many "exagerations" RE climate change that have been attributed to him that are in actuality misquotes of what he actually said.
So congrats. You found him making an actual mistatment. Big flippin' deal. He's not a climate scientist, and neither is anyone else who doubts AGW. If h eoversold it, that's becuase politicans HAVE ot oversell things in order to get any support.
Conservatives never want even want to get up, unless the couch is on fire.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
It's not his job to predict polar ice melt. It's his job to get poeple to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. And there's nothing he could say, and no way he could say it, and no amount of evidence that would win YOU over anyway... AND THAT'S A BIG PART OF THE PROBLEM HERE!
Is that what you've come to expect from politicians? Besides, Gore is not now a politician, so your excuse for him on that doesn't wash. In any event, if pokiticians have to oversell something it's because they are phony manipulators, pandering elitists and deceptive lawmakers. And we don't need them running anything, no matter what party they belong to.
In a word? YES.
And I include both Republicans and Democrats in that statement, and pretty much everyone else as well.
And if you think this is limited to politics you're a fool. What do you think MARKETING is? If overselling something makes you a phony manipulators, pandering elitists and deceptive [whatever] then not only is every poliician in that camp, but so is everyone who sells sonsumer goods or services!
If you don't OVERsell, the you won't SELL, because the NEXT GUY will oversell! (Just ask the late Billy Mays, the all-time heavyweight champion of overselling things!)
At least Gore was trying to oversell saving our habitat and billions of lives in the process. The ends may not justify the means in your eyes, but it does help to at least HAVe an ends that more noble than your own enrichment.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Most things in this world are overseold for $19.99 plus S&H.
But it is how they are elected.
And this is no less true with EVERY piece of legislation then it is in an election.
You may not like the system. Neither do I. I'm sure no liberal does: it's a system that favor the TURE elites - the huge corporations. It's a system that HEAVILY favors the Right.
-------------------------------------------
And you're either a blind particsan or an outright fool if you're going to hold Al Gore responsible for it, or criticise him in particular for doing what it takes to survive in it.
Well I was never quite sure that liberals only pandered to those with moneyed pocketbooks for contributions, but if you say so. You are far more immersed in the Democratic party than I am, so who am I to disagree. I defer to your inside knowledge. Thank you.
It's merely a question of degree, and which direction they're trying to go on any given issue.
----------------------------------------------
I'll take the one who makes compromises with industry as opposed to the one who makes only concessions anytime.
He was told something by a scientist in a private conversation. He misinterpreted what that scientist told him, and that misinterpretation is what he relayed.
The scientist was giving a rough guess as to a potential outcome. Gore thought it was more of a prediction and more accurate than a rough guess.
That makes what Gore said much less offensive and outrageous, but that doesn't work to the benefit of the deniers as much, so they have to spin it.
Dr. Maslowski made that very clear.
Who's doing the spinning? You for sure and Albert's office is in full spin mode now.
Et tu, Tommy? I remember you once chastising others for changing their nom de plumes.
And, by the way, I remember this because I have a good memory, not because I'm "obsessed" with you. (There, that takes care of your next substance-free argument, which you've played so often; now you can go back to your regular schedule of topic diversion, broad-brush attacks, and failed mindreading.)
I didn't say you cared (there's another example of diversion), I was pointing out your hypocrisy, and--surprise!--you ignored it.
Whatever makes you feel good is ok by me.
Oh, the superficiality.
Oh, and yes, you are obsessed.
Yep, I'm obsessed because you say so. As if that carried any weight in the real world.
Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore.
Is "provided" the correct term for a "private conversation"? Odd.
Are you really that dense that you never could imagine that scenario?
Are you also so dense that that you don't realize that a PRIVATE EMAIL conversation could have taken place, again where the scientist wrote something that Gore misinterpreted, and the scientist is simply saying that he doesn't understand how Gore could have misunderstood his rough guess about a potential outcome as an accurate prediction?
I swear, I thought you were smarter than this! Are you really this dense, or is this yet another personal attack where you just couldn't be reasonable when confronted with one of my posts?
So now, please formulate your next reply based upon your standard format - where you're a victim of something or another and you make another personal attack.
And the good Dr. said specifically that it was unclear to him how Gore came up with the info after the information he provided to Gore's office. There is no reference to any personal conversation there, none. Gore was CYA-ing.
And you're the fool who bought it.
She whines about Gore being held accountable for his mistatements, but then accuses you of claiming victimhood.
When reading through some of these threads I often think DumbDolly is a republican shill, just posing as a progressive to make progressives look bad. The way she touts her stupidity has an unreal quality about it. And she cannot be serious in the way she admonishes people for 'derailing' a thread. Earlier I was reading over a threads where she lectures a few people about "sticking to the article." It strains credulity that someone could be that annoyingly frivolous. .. .
As for Gore, he will forever be the poster child for liberal victimhood after he had the 2000 election stolen from him. So he is now an iconic figure and no matter how many times he sticks his foot in his mouth, or outright lies, he is above criticism.
I mean, look at what he went through.
What I object to and LAUGH AT is personal attacks where debates should be taking place. They're inappropriate and they're a sign that you have nothing else! It's a sign of a failure on the part of the poster USING the personal attack, and not a sign that I am "sensitive" to them!
The mere fact that you claim that I'm too sensitive to personal attacks is yet again another personal attack! How unique - NOT!
And I don't know what any previous posters did to you that got your panties into such a wad, but it has nothing to do with me.
And as I have explained a couple of times, Al Gore misunderstood the other guy. The fact that the other guy doesn't understand how Gore could have misunderstood what he said doesn't mean diddly - once again, you're out in left field all alone. There sure WAS a reference to a personal conversation! Not sure how you missed that!
"Mr Gore’s office later admitted that the 75 per cent figure was one used by Dr Maslowksi as a “ballpark figure” several years ago in a conversation with Mr Gore."
Ever watch weather forecasts? Even with all their satellite images and radar and advanced technology, they still can't make a 100% accurate prediction for the next day, let alone the next 10 years.
Just more talking points for the Corporate shills to spoon out to their drooling masses.
TBone / Koko even goes as far as reading Gore's mind based on Maslowski's statement that he doesn't understand how Gore reached his conclusion.
It's a very selective breed of skepticism.
It's endemic to the neocon mindset, Colonel. I think that Mr. Boehlert wrote about it somewhere, in fact. The rule goes: if any part of a Democratic scandal is true, the whole thing is true; if any part of a Republican scandal is untrue, the whole thing is untrue.
That's FACTS chicken dipper. The plural. Cardinal Gore has been caught in so many mis-truths now it's becoming pathological.
Keep the warmer fires burning dipper. It's shaping up to be a cold winter.
Yet, strangely, you've been linking to the same one or two examples forever, while completely ignoring that the deniers' arguments are built almost entirely on deliberate lies and simple-minded misunderstanding of science.
The funniest part is that you seem to think you're fooling anybody but your fellow cult members. Keep plugging away, Koko, maybe you have some more "Al Gore quotes" you can add.
Thanks for reminding me, Colonel - TBone Slickens trying to take down Al Gore by using Dan Quayle quotes - one of the funniest posts ever!
And they keep going to the same sources, like moths flying into bug zappers.
Slickens, if you don't want to appear to be simultaneously nasty and foolish, then don't get picky about a typo and almost immediately follow it with a nonexistent word. It's "untruths."
By the way, none of this is about the science to most of the posters on this site anyway. It is a secular theology and misplaced guilt that drives you. In this secular religion, man was given Eden (untouched Earth) and he has screwed everything up. Man's Original sin in this religion is that he dare to produce and consume. But, with his new secular religion, he can find Salvation and Atonement through 'sustainability', recycling, carbon-trading schemes, and clean energy projects, etc. ( BTW, sustainability theory is partly based on the Precautionary Principle which is self-contradictory when applied to itself.) Some(recyling, etc.) of these things are laudable(just as some parts of christianity are laudable), but when they take on a religous zeal and certainty is where the trouble starts. You guys want energy consumption, development, and production to be centrally planned, for instance, and demonize all those apostates who dare object or offer different solutions or trade-offs. It's not your ends that I question in some instances, but your means.
It also makes me a tad bit suspicous that the same groups who have wanted energy production to be nationalized(centrally directed) for decades are the same people propagandizing for man-made global warming. Yes, let's subsidize and mandate energy production(however inefficient and costly)that we approve of, but tax and regulate the hell out of energy producers that we don't approve of( they are sinners afterall). Haven't we learned anything form the ethanol debacle? Haven't we learned anything form the Dutch and British experiences with wind farms? There is now a moratorium in place for the building of new windmill farms in these countries because they proved to be so costly and inefficient. It is the inevitable result of a centrally planned sector of the economy to have misallocations of resources and widespread inefficiency. The state can't allocate resources efficiently because the state has no mechanisms to sort.
The same groups who have always called, and are now calling for higher taxes and ever more consolidation of power at the federal level also happen to be conveniently, mysteriously zealous proponents of AGW theory. It is politics through and through. I have no doubt that I will be identified as a rabid right-winger or conservative for deviating from MMGW orhtodoxy, for instance. I'm actually a classical liberal, though. Our politics shouldn't have anything to do with it, but sadly it seems to have everything to do with it.
However, I get itchy when I hear some global warming fanatics slam any dissension or alternate opinions or theories. I get suspicious when the first words out of their mouths are to get the hand of government more involved in "fixing" it.
As I said, government isn't always the corrector of all our ills, despite liberal's insistence. Global warming is no different than any other "catastrophic" event of our time that the alarmists demand government come in and save the day for us.
You have to look at their record. You keep waiting for them to act, much like those zealots who gather on mountaintops waiting for the Rapture, drinking Kool-aid all the while. How many years are you prepared to wait for them to act? How many years have you waited already with nothing to show for it?
No worry, there are those of us with enough personal responsibility to act in the face of self-serving, sociopathic corporate irresponsibility.
One of the earlier posters ask me to prove that there were damaging e-mails from the CRU e-mail threads. Why can't you go read some of them for yourself. I've posted at least 20 of them in the preceding two weeks. Other posters on this site have done the same. Am I required to think for you, too? Only a MMGW zealot would claim that these e-mails aren't incredibly damaging.
When you start off with a falsehood like that, it's very hard to take you seriously. And that was hard to do before.
Here's an analogy. Let's pretend you run a small business and these are your July through June sales (in thousands):
Jul-$30 Aug-$33 Sep-$35 Oct-$38 Nov-$40 Dec-$57 Jan-$43 Feb-$45 Mar-$47 Apr-$49 May-$52 Jun-$54
If you looked at those numbers, would you say that sales haven't increased since December? They haven't been as high as December's, but it would be a lie to say they haven't been climbing.
I'll grant that my example is oversimplified, that in reality we'd see a more zig-zag pattern as we do with the temperatures. However, it's clear that the anomaly of December doesn't mean the upward trend since then doesn't exist. When you plot the temperatures of 2000-2008 on a graph and put in a trend line you will see a slight upward slope. When 2009 is added (the year is on path to be among the 5 warmest ever) it will tip even a little more upward. The anomaly of 1998 doesn't change that.
This decade is going to be the warmest ever recorded. That's a fact. The upward trend isn't as sharp, but it has persisted.
I've read a large percentage of the stolen emails, including all of those the denialists have cited as most damning. There's no smoking gun there. What I came away impressed with was dedicated, passionate scientists working very hard to make sure their data and models were as accurate as possible. The only way the emails have been damaging is because of the dishonest way they are being used by the anti-science crowd.
The deniers have their heels dug in pretty good, and I imagine they'll keep ignoring reality and throwing stuff against the wall as long as somebody feeds them material.
Phil jones, director of the CRU, writes to Michael Mann, about two academics who disagree with him:
" I can't see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out- even if we have to redefine what peer-review is!"
You want to defend that? How about this:
Phil Jones to Michael Mann on Feb. 3, 2005:
"The two MMs [ McKittrick ans McIntyre] have been after the CRU station data for years. If they ever hear that there is a Freedom of Information Act in the U.K., I think I'll delete the file rahter than send to anyone."
And, indeed, the CRU subsequently announced that they had "inavdertently deleted" the requested data. Yeah, sure.
Here's another one for your unfocused attention:
Phil Jones, July 5, 2005:
" The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms (why, if it is the truth?) if I said that the world had cooled form 1998. Okay it has but it is only seven years of data and it isn't statistically significant."
It's now been 11 years and still no net warming. Is this statistically insignificant as well? You called 1998 an anomalous year, but that wasn't what it was called when the alarmist set was saying that it was the hottest year on record. There was no talk of anomalies, but, rather, they were trying to identify it as a trend. You do temember that, right? Moving the goal posts, are we?
We are talking about things that were actually done and not passing speculation, aren't we?
The second quote expresses frustration over what they see as gadflies filing frivolous demands for data that waste their time. Here, again, it's expressions of opinion on which no action was taken. And you're wrong about the timing of data deletion. The email you quote was from 2005. The discard of data that the denialists have their panties in a bunch about took place about 20 years earlier. None of which was original data. It's all still available from the source.
The third quote is a simple expression of concern about having their statements misrepresented. That concern has been shown to be well-founded. Again, no indication of fraudulent action.
You're wrong about the last 11 years. The years of 2000 through 2008 DO show an upward trend that will become more distinct when 2009 data is added in. And I do remember reading in 1998 that there were additional factors pushing the temperatures up, but I tend to read popular science magazines.
So, might I assume you're conceding the point that just because there was a spike year in 1998, that doesn't mean the following years can't show an upward trend? And, in fact, that's exactly what they do.
I do believe he sincerely wants to leave the world better and prepared to handle the enviromental challenges we are facing. He is just not necessarily the best spokesman for the cause.
What is Dick Morris' goal? A better world or ideological warfare? Or even worse..."whatever makes Dick Morris rich"?
I mean, what else do you expect from a shyster like him?
Q: How do we know that Dick Morris is lying?
A: His mouth is open.
Unfortunately, you can replace Dick Morris with just about any member of the FOX network.