The courtier press of the Clinton-Gore era is a wonder to behold. It comprises journalists more dogmatically loyal to Bill and Al than the staffers who do this sort of thing for a living.
Consider Lars Erik Nelson's defense of Al Gore last week against the charge that Gore claims to have invented the Internet. Gore has a well-known weakness for bragging, and has himself acknowledged that his choice of words in his ill-fated interview with Wolf Blitzer a year ago was unfortunate. Nelson protests, however, that the specific verbiage of Gore's boast is often misquoted. Fair enough, then: Gore never said he invented the Internet. He said, "During my service in the U.S. Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
But this, despite Nelson's elaborate effort to argue otherwise, is manifestly untrue, and it's the sort of overstatement that rightly opens a politician up to ridicule. The creation of the Internet in fact dates to the 1960s. Now, Gore was a prominent cheerleader in the 1980s for a particular vision of a government-financed "information super-highway" -- he always has had a good eye for a trendy issue. But even that doesn't earn him the points Nelson tries to award for prescience or, in the columnist's own wording, for taking the initiative in "creating the Internet as we know it today."
Nelson reports that Gore's vision was inspired by France's "Minitel home-computer network." The columnist seems unaware this was one of the great government-sponsored techno-fiascos of the late 20th century. By installing Minitel terminals in every French home, the government there tied that nation to an instantly archaic national video-text network that in effect cut the French off from the Internet. And, in an effort to make back the capital investment, Minitel's great triumph was to bring the equivalent of a government subsidized 1-900 porno service (known as Minitel Rose) to every Jacques, Yvonne, and Pierre. Luckily, the Internet was built out with private financing too fast to be wrecked by Gore's dirigiste dreams.
Maybe next time Nelson should try praising Gore for his light touch and self-deprecating wit.