So, Dean is about to be Gored with a story that he's "anti-privacy" for some remarks he made in 2002. The Register has the story, which is rather complicated, because it involves a politician's stepping into some very technical territory: Gore Warning Flag #1. Basically, Dean is alleged to have advocated national ID cards and called privacy an "urban myth".
Wait a minute, the plot thickens. The story was broken by one Declan McCullagh, who boasts he's the guy who invented the "Al Gore invented the Internet" story. Gore Warning Flag #2.
Folks, the "Al Gore said he invented the Internet" story is BOGUS! It's been picked over, ripped apart, and hung out to dry. But McCullagh is actually proud of injecting this bogus meme into our noxious political discourse. He rips a few Dean quotes out of context, layers in some technical obfuscation, and he has a smear that will be repeated by the Mighty Wurlitzer until we're all sick of hearing about it, and it becomes axiomatic that Dean is anti-privacy. It's the same slime job he helped perpetrate against Gore in 2000, and it's up to us to ignore it.
How interesting that Trippi has just resigned the Dean campaign!
Posted by: lurkerdad at January 29, 2004 09:50 AM