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October 10, 2004
Debates and Internets
Will Forte as President Bush on last night's episode of Saturday Night Live:
"Good question, Carla. I hear there's rumors on The Internets that we're going to have a draft. I don't know how many of these Internets are carrying these rumors, but they're just wrong. I think the problem here may be more of a question of getting rid of the bad Internets and keeping the good Internets. You know, 'cause I think we can all agree....they're just too many Internets."
I was highly amused and very pleased to see that there's a huge group of folks that got a big kick out of Bush's pluralization gaffe ("I hear there's rumors on the Internets") during Friday night's debate. Even Howard Fineman mentioned it on The Chris Matthews Show this morning - further proof that the chuckling about this latest Bushism has extended far beyond the headshaking from technologically savvy voters and snarky bloggers.
But I discovered something really interesting while going back and looking through the transcripts of the 2000 presidential debates. Bush actually used the term "Internets" in the third debate with Al Gore. But in 2000, he didn't precede "Internets" with a "the". Here's an excerpt from Bush's answer to a question about morality and protecting children from mass popular culture:
"We can have filters on Internets where public money is spent. There ought to be filters in public libraries and filters in public schools so if kids get on the Internet, there is not going to be pornography or violence coming in."
I wondered if this might be a typo, but I went back through the C-SPAN debate video for the 10/17/2000 debate and discovered that Bush really did say "internets" (exactly one hour into the video). Maybe there's something about that room, because the third 2000 debate took place in the exact same location at Washington University in St. Louis. Regardless, the 2000 usage of "internets" isn't at all worthy of mocking...there's technically nothing at all incorrect about it. Despite all the haughty "there's only one internet" assertions that I've seen floating around the political blogosphere this weekend, there are actually multiple "lowercase i" internets (i.e. networks of smaller computer networks that use the same internetworking protocol) in existence. There's even a second big "Internet" (capital I) where public money is spent: the next-generation Internet2 currently being evaluated by numerous researchers, including many right here in North Carolina. But I really doubt the IPv6 packets on Internet2 or the traffic on smaller corporate internets have been carrying many of those rumors about a U.S. military draft. And it's clear by his use of the article "the" that in this past Friday's debate, Bush just plain misspoke...and made himself look pretty stupid and out of touch while doing it. Which is fine by me....if the 2000 rules are still in play, once Saturday Night Live mocks a debate moment, no one will ever forget it.
Posted by Tim at October 10, 2004 09:19 PM
Comments
I entertained myself for quite a while on Saturday, flipping back and forth from the re-run of the debate (was it on PBS?) and the SNL version.
Posted by: pinky at October 11, 2004 04:20 PM
hilarious. I wonder if Bush can even type. And what about the bulge in his back? A kink from his tailored suit? bullshit. But if it was a radio transmitter feeding him lines, he wasn't listening.
Posted by: spicy at October 11, 2004 04:21 PM
yeah yeah the georgey is stupid. but he makes corny jokes that make people laugh, and we all know, if there is anything voters like next to an attractive President, is a goofy one. intelligence apparently ranks, in order of importance to the average American citizen, somewhere near the ability to pronunciate and whether or not he wears boxers of briefs. this time when people threaten to move to Canada if Bushy wins, i doubt they'll be kidding.
Posted by: yonni at October 11, 2004 11:01 PM