Do you think the Major Media has a ____ bias?

SamFisher · May 26, 2006

StupidMoniker said:

Al Gore said that he took the initiative in creating the Internet. That is not true. The Internet first came into being as ARPANET in 1969 which is 8 years before Gore started serving in Congress, so Gore had no connection with the creation of the Internet. Gore helped with legislation to improve the internet and to make it more available to the public and commercial entities, but his claim to have taken the initiative in creating the Internet makes it seem like he was instrumental in the Internet coming into being, and depending our one's reading is a claim that he created the Internet. The argument against people saying he claimed to have invented the internet is quibbling over wording. Al Gore in fact embellished his role in the creation of the Internet.
Click to expand...

Embellished? How? Where's the quote from Gore? I do know that you and the folks you're defending certainly embellished his wording to ay that "Al Gore says he invented the internet," which he did not ever say.

As to his actual role:

But the real question is what, if anything, did Gore actually do to create the modern Internet? According to Vincent Cerf, a senior vice president with MCI Worldcom who's been called the Father of the Internet, "The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator."

The inventor of the Mosaic Browser, Marc Andreesen, credits Gore with making his work possible. He received a federal grant through Gore's High Performance Computing Act. The University of Pennsylvania's Dave Ferber says that without Gore the Internet "would not be where it is today."

Joseph E. Traub, a computer science professor at Columbia University, claims that Gore "was perhaps the first political leader to grasp the importance of networking the country. Could we perhaps see an end to cheap shots from politicians and pundits about inventing the Internet."
Click to expand...

Do you not understand the common sense meaning of "take the initiative"? As far as I can tell (and please, prove me wrong if you know otherwise). Gore does seem to be one of the first senators to propose internent-friendly bills & legislation. How is that not "taking the initiative"? How is that even embellishing?

gwayneco · May 26, 2006

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. - Al Gore

SamFisher · May 26, 2006

Once and 4 all, the daily howler:

NVENTING INVENTED THE INTERNET! No one said Boo about Gore’s remark. Then, the RNC spin-points arrived:

Where does spin come from? Inventing the Internet

CHAPTER I—GORE IGNORED: The press corps’ twenty-month War against Gore began on March 11, 1999. Two days earlier, Gore had given an interview to Wolf Blitzer for a special, weeknight broadcast of CNN’s Late Edition. Gore was the sitting vice president of the United States, and the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. As such, the taped session was previewed and promoted by the network. It was Gore’s “first on-camera interview since filing as a candidate,” one CNN promo said.

A year of impeachment had come to an end; Gore’s informal campaigning was about to begin. And a spin campaign from the Washington press corps would follow in extremely short order. This campaign would be built on a nasty charge—the charge that Candidate Gore was a liar. The theme would dominate campaign coverage for the entire twenty months of the race.

In the Late Edition interview, Blitzer asked Gore to explain what set him apart from Bill Bradley, his opponent for the Dem nomination. Somewhat clumsily, Gore offered a list of career accomplishments. One part of his answer drew more attention than any remark by any candidate in the entire 2000 campaign.

“During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet,” Gore said. “I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.” On the whole, this was the kind of chest-thumping statement which candidates routinely make on the stump. But as anyone who followed this election will know, Gore’s initial, sixteen-word comment was widely dissected for the next twenty months. Almost surely, Gore’s brief remark about the Net was the most widely-discussed statement of Campaign 2000. The spinning of this one remark drove a nasty War Against Gore—a spin campaign which almost surely decided the 2000 race.

Gore’s remark would be widely attacked. But surprise! At the time Gore made his statement, it received no attention whatever. Blitzer didn’t ask Gore to explain his remark; he showed no surprise at what Gore had said. And in its on-air promotions for the taped interview, CNN showed no sign of thinking that Gore had “made news” with his comment. Meanwhile, major papers which covered Gore’s interview completely ignored the comment. On March 10, for example, the Washington Post ran a full report about the Gore-Blitzer session. But the paper only discussed Gore’s remarks on U.S. relations with China. On March 11, the Washington Times’ Greg Pierce reviewed the interview in his “Inside Politics” column. But Pierce only mentioned what Gore had said about early campaign polling. Similarly, the AP’s dispatches about Gore’s interview completely ignored his Internet comment. And another major organ passed over Gore’s statement. On March 10, the Hotline—the widely-read, on-line digest of the day’s political news—ran extensive excerpts from the Late Edition Q-and-A’s, but omitted the Internet remark altogether. In fact, in the first two days after Gore’s appearance, no press entity remarked, in any way, on what Gore said about the Net. Gore’s comment would be critiqued, attacked, burlesqued and spun over the course of the next twenty months. But it evoked no reaction from the press—none at all—at the time Gore made it. Repeat: No one in the press said even one word about Gore’s statement at the time it was made. No one showed the slightest sign of thinking Gore’s comment was notable.

Why did Gore’s comment provoke no reaction? Perhaps because Blitzer and others knew that Gore had taken the leadership, within the Congress, in developing what we now call the Internet. Gore was explicitly discussing his achievements in Congress, and if “I took the initiative” meant “I took the leadership,” his statement was perfectly accurate. (Extemporaneous speech doesn’t always parse perfectly. Everyone in Washington knows this.) Indeed, as Gore’s remark began attracting wide scrutiny, some journalists reviewed his congressional record—and a wide array of Internet pioneers described his key role, within the Congress, in creating what we now call the Net. In the March 21 Washington Post, for example, Jason Schwartz quoted several Internet pioneers, including Vinton Cerf, the man often called “the father of the Internet.” Cerf praised Gore’s role in the Net’s development. “I think it is very fair to say that the Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the vice president,” he said. Meanwhile, Katie Hafner, author of a book on the Internet’s origins, penned a short piece in the New York Times, quoting experts who said that Gore “helped lift the Internet from relative obscurity and turn it into a widely accessible, commercial network.” On March 18, Gore tried to clarify his remark in an interview with USA Today. “I did take the lead in the Congress,” he told Chuck Raasch; he described his Internet work in detail. Raasch quoted Gore’s explanation—but it was mentioned in no other paper.

How well-known was Gore’s leadership role? The press corps was full of experienced scribes who knew all about his work in this area. We’ll let the Nexis archives guide us as we review this familiar old tale. According to Nexis, the Washington Post’s first reference to the Internet occurred in November 1988; a “virus” had attacked the little-known network, which connected some 50,000 computers, the Post said. But as journalists began to report on the Net, Gore’s key role in its development was clear. One month later, for example, Martin Walker wrote this in The Guardian:

WALKER (12/30/88): 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.

Nine months later, the Post reported that the Bush administration “plans to unveil tomorrow an ambitious plan to spend nearly $2 billion enhancing the nation’s technological know-how, including the creation of a high-speed data ‘superhighway’ that would link more than 1,000 research sites around the country.” This network was “comparable to an interstate highway system for electronic data,” the paper said—and it noted that “a similar plan has been proposed by Sen. Albert Gore (D-Tenn.), whose legislation also proposes creating a vast electronic library that could be accessed by users seeking federally gathered information.” Simply put, Gore’s leadership role had been widely reported—and was thoroughly understood in the press. How well known was Gore’s work in this area? Five years later, the Internet was becoming well known, and the Washingtonian’s Alison Schneider looked back on its years of development:

SCHNEIDER (12/94): Internet. There’s no escaping it. It seems like only yesterday that Al Gore was preaching the merits of the I-way to a nation that still thought the Net was something used only for catching butterflies.

Duh! Within the press corps, everyone knew that Gore was the leader, within the Congress, in creating what we now call the Net. Indeed, by the time of the 2000 election, even one of Gore’s long-standing foes was praising his work in this area. On September 1, 2000, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich addressed the American Political Science Association. His remarks were broadcast on C-SPAN:

GINGRICH: 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, and the truth is—and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a “futures group”—the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the ’80s began to actually happen.

Gingrich knew what Gore had done. Indeed, Gore and Gingrich had almost been friendly rivals in these technological areas. Their leadership roles had long been clear. In 1995, for example, the New York Times’ Peter Lewis attended a national cyberspace conference, where he interviewed a group of Gingrich supporters. “A number of participants said Mr. Gingrich had effectively seized the mantel of top Government cyberspace visionary from Vice President Al Gore, who is credited with creating the phrase ‘information superhighway,’” Lewis wrote. Long before the press corps ginned up the Internet flap, Lewis’ statement reflected what everyone knew—that Gore had enjoyed a long-standing reign as the government’s King of the Net.

Had Gore misstated his role to Blitzer? This notion would be aggressively bruited throughout Campaign 2000, but you had to work very hard to tease a lie out of Gore’s statement. Gore had said this: During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. Gingrich said this: Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet. It’s hard to torture a difference from that pair of statements, and a Gore biographer, the Post’s David Maraniss, seemed to complete the Rule of Three. In August 2000, Maraniss said this on CNN’s Reliable Sources: “Gore really was instrumental in developing the Internet. He was the one congressman who understood the whole thing in the ’70s, when no other congressman gave a darn about it.” Had Gore misrepresented his leadership role? Only those determined to make him a liar would have drawn that tendentious conclusion. Unfortunately, many journalists were eager to do that—a fact which would become crystal clear.

Indeed, Gore’s remark about the Net would become a cause celebre. Completely ignored at the time it was made, it became an iconic example of an alleged character problem—Gore’s widely-flogged “problem with the truth.” For two years, Gore would be savaged as a liar—many pundits would call him “delusional”—and his Internet comment would be Exhibit A in their endless assault on his character and integrity. But look again at what three men said, and convince yourself that it really did happen. Convince yourself that, for two solid years, Gore was denounced by the press as a liar; denounced for a comment which created no interest—none at all—in the press at the time it was made:

Al Gore, 3/9/99: During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.

Newt Gingrich, 9/1/00: Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet.

David Maraniss, 8/26/00: Gore really was instrumental in developing the Internet. He was the one congressman who understood the whole thing in the ’70s.

Two of these men remained major pundits. One of these men stood condemned as a liar. But so it went throughout Campaign 2000 as the press corps conducted its War Against Gore. So it went as a deeply dysfunctional press corps made a joke of your White House election.

CHAPTER II—THE RNC SPEAKS: How was Gore made into a liar? Gore made his comment on March 9; after two days of silence from the press corps, the RNC swung into action. At mid-day on Thursday, March 11, a story written by Michelle Mittelstadt appeared on the AP wire. “Republicans pounce on Gore’s claim that he created the Internet,” the headline said. But had Gore really said he created the Internet? A new GOP press release said that he had—and so did the new AP headline. Indeed, showing off her writerly skills, Mittelstadt began her crucial report with a second tendentious paraphrase:

MITTELSTADT: Vice President Al Gore’s claim that he is the father of the Internet drew amused protests Thursday from congressional Republicans.

But had Gore really said he was father of the Internet? The language was entertaining—and highly tendentious—but it wasn’t drawn from Gore’s actual statement. No matter—on the morning of March 11, GOP leaders had released statements in which they’d attacked Gore’s remark. Mittelstadt began with Dick Armey:

MITTELSTADT: House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said that even under the time-honored tradition of politicians taking credit for everything, Gore’s statement is an “outrageous claim.”

Gore, who is widely credited for coining the term “information superhighway,” raised eyebrows with a pronouncement he made Tuesday during a CNN interview.

As we’ve seen, that last statement by Mittelstadt was wildly misleading. Gore’s “pronouncement” hadn’t “raised any eyebrows” with Blitzer, for example; Blitzer said nothing when Gore made his statement. Nor had it “raised any eyebrows” at the AP itself; on March 9 and 10, the service had filed several reports on the interview, none of which mentioned Gore’s comment. No, Gore’s “pronouncement” had only “raised eyebrows” among his Republican political rivals, several of whom Mittelstadt now quoted. For example, she quoted Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who said, “Gore taking credit for creating the Internet certainly gives new meaning to the term ‘March madness.’” The next day, the AP quoted a press release from RNC chairman Jim Nicholson. “Al Gore the father of the Internet?” he asked. Gore was “claim[ing] credit for other people’s successes,” according to the RNC chief. (Nicholson, of course, would play the press corps for fools throughout the election. Revisit his tour of the fancy hotel. Links are provided below.)

In her influential report, Mittelstadt committed one of the press corps’ most common sins; she took an unremarkable statement by Gore and paraphrased it in the most tendentious way possible—which also happened to be the way Gore’s political rivals were spinning it. Had Gore ever claimed to be “father of the Internet?” The language didn’t appear in his statement, but it now led Mittelstadt’s AP report. And now, the press corps—having ignored Gore’s remark for two solid days—began to file excited reports uncritically adopting the GOP’s spin-points. Indeed, some of the GOP’s most tendentious language was simply adopted, word-for-word, by major members of the press. On March 11, for example, Sensenbrenner’s press release carried this headline: “DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR: VICE PRESIDENT GORE TAKES CREDIT FOR CREATING THE INTERNET.” On March 12, Lou Dobbs cribbed from the statement on Moneyline, his nightly CNN program. Dobbs called Gore’s remarks “a case study tonight in delusions of grandeur,” just as Sensenbrenner had done. And Gore “apparently thinks he’s the Father of the Internet,” Dobbs said, using a key phrase from Nicholson’s statement! That’s right, kids! Dobbs took “delusions of grandeur” straight from Sensenbrenner, and “father of the Internet” straight from Nicholson; like Mittelstadt, he directly adopted the GOP’s tendentious accounts of what Gore supposedly said. But there were a few things Lou Dobbs didn’t do in his report, in which he trashed Gore for his “delusions.” He didn’t describe Gore’s important work in the Congress—and he never quoted Gore’s actual statement. But so it would go throughout this election, as RNC-scripted spinners like Dobbs ginned up nasty campaigns against Gore, confounding ideas about who runs the media. On March 11, the GOP said that Gore had “delusions of grandeur.” The next day, CNN—which said nothing about Gore’s remark in real time—went ahead and used the nasty phrase too.

But then, Dobbs’ cutting-and-pasting about the Net pointed to what was to come. In three easy steps, Gore’s completely unremarkable comment was turned into something “delusional.” First, his explicit reference to the congressional context was dropped from standard press accounts. If Gore was quoted at all, his sixteen words were pared down to eight: “I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Then, eight words were whittled to three—Gore said he created the Internet (this, of course, was the formulation which led Sensenbrenner’s release). Finally, the word “invented,” which Gore never used, became the press corps’ verb of choice. All over the press corps—all over TV—citizens were told a remarkable story: Al Gore said he invented the Internet!!! The absurd presentation was in place almost instantly, with worried pundits wracking their brains about why Gore had made such a puzzling statement. Here, for example, are early passages from just one paper—that very same paper, the Washington Times, to which Gore referred last week:

John McCaslin, 3/16/99: [T]he Gore 2000 campaign…office has already gotten a taste of what it’s in for after Mr. Gore recently took credit for inventing the Internet.

Ralph Z. Hallow, 3/16/99: Relaxed and ready to enjoy his second and better-prepared go at the GOP nomination, [Steve Forbes] joked in an interview yesterday about Vice President Al Gore’s claim of having invented the Internet.

Rowan Scarborough, 3/16/99: “This one is going to stick,” said William Kristol, editor and publisher of the conservative Weekly Standard. ‘Al Gore. Inventor of the Internet.’”

Editorial, 3/18/99: Mr. Gore has some explaining to do to parents. As everyone now knows, Mr. Gore invented the Internet, which means the vice president is responsible for making hard-core p*rnography available to elementary schoolchildren at the local library.

Robert Tyrell, 3/19/99: Did you hear Trent Lott is claiming to have invented the paper clip? Some think he is making a joke at the expense of Al Gore’s megalomaniacal claims about inventing the Internet.

A powerful propaganda campaign had begun. “[E]veryone now knows,” the Times said sarcastically, that Al Gore invented the Internet. Strangely, the paper had said no such thing on March 10 and 11, when it first reviewed the Gore-Blitzer session. Amazing, isn’t it? Al Gore said he invented the Internet—and the aggressively anti-Gore Times failed to notice! But then, no one in the press corps noticed this “statement” by Gore—until the RNC gimmicked it up.

The Times, of course, is a conservative paper; it battered Gore for the next twenty months over matters large, small and invented. But with startling speed, the notion that Al Gore said he invented the Internet became mainstream press dogma too. Pundits ran to recite the new story—pundits who hadn’t said a word until the RNC spoke. How quickly was Gore chided for saying he invented the Internet? USA Today used the phrase on March 15 (editorial headline: “Inventing the Internet”). That same day, Al Kamen used the phrase in his Washington Post column (he quoted a joke by a GOP spokesman). On March 16, Hardball’s Chris Matthews mocked Gore for saying he “invented the Internet.” On March 17, Judy Woodruff, hosting CNN’s Inside Politics, chided Gore as “inventor of the Internet.” The embellished phrase reached the Los Angeles Times on March 18; the Boston Globe on March 20; the Associated Press on March 22. With blinding speed, the corps had invented a thrilling new story: Al Gore said he invented the Internet! And none of these news orgs had mentioned this “fact”—until the RNC scripted the spin.

With remarkable speed, the tendentious claim became Standard Issue. All over the press corps, pundits accused Gore of having said he invented the Net. The high (or low) point in this growing burlesque came in a June 2 USA Today story. In a report about problems with Gore’s early campaign, Mimi Hall penned this laughable—but completely inexcusable—account of what Gore had said:

HALL: A couple of Gore gaffes, including his assertion that he “invented” the Internet, didn’t help.

And yes, incredibly, that’s the way Hall wrote it; the one word Hall put inside quotes was the one word which Gore never said! It’s hard to know how scribes can be so inept, but Hall was hardly alone in her blunder. On June 16, as Gore formally launched his campaign, Elaine Povich—also deriding Gore’s alleged “gaffes”— matched Hall in the pages of Newsday:

POVICH: It was another gaffe in a series of missteps so far in Gore’s campaign—including…his widely mocked assertion that he “invented” the Internet.

Incredible, isn’t it? But in Campaign 2000, it happened routinely: Tendentious paraphrase was transformed into a “quote” as the press corps embellished the news to push spin-lines. For the next two years, the press corps’ embellished account would be the statement of record, passed on, inside quotes, as if Gore really said it. Millions of voters would come to believe that Gore really had made the odd claim.

Povich was actually right on one point. By the weekend of March 14, Gore was, in fact, being “widely mocked” for saying he invented the Internet. From this point on, Gore’s congressional achievements would rarely be mentioned; his unremarkable statement would be deftly transformed. The Washington press hadn’t said a word when Gore made his actual statement. Now, the corps was off and running on a two-year attack on Gore’s character. But so it went as the Washington press corps made a joke of your White House election. Such spin campaigns would be ginned up all through the 2000 race. For the record, the “farm chores” hoax began on March 16, five days after the Internet nonsense. It also began with an RNC press release. See below for links.

Invented the Internet? Gore’s recent statement to the New York Observer referred to precisely this kind of press coverage. Invented the Internet is an obvious case in which “Republican talking points” were deftly “injected” into the work of the mainstream press. No one—no one!—said a word about Gore’s remark at the time it was made. But when the RNC sent out its points, pundits simply ran to recite them. And so it went, throughout the campaign, as the RNC scripted your hapless press corps. Indeed, there’s long been a phrase for such work of this type. As the RNC sent out its points, the press corps became useful idiots.

And readers, the spinning ain’t over. The people who took part in this effort during Campaign 2000 will now pretend they have no idea what Gore could be talking about. Do RNC spin-points rule the press? Pundits will swear that no such thing occurs. And on the fringes of their current dissembling, a deeply repulsive little man will even say that Gore’s comments are “loony”—so loony, he says, that Gore needs help.

In fact, it’s the American people who really need help—protection from their press corps’ misconduct. But don’t expect that help to come from within the press corps itself. All our pundits played some role in the twenty-month War Against Gore. We keep waiting for some brave soul to speak. But right now, their money is still spending good, and the press corps’ relentless dissembling moves forward. Joe Scarborough can tell you the truth—Mara can’t. Just check out the latest remarks by Charles K if you expect their misconduct to stop.
Click to expand...

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh120302.shtml

CBrownFanClub · May 26, 2006

The press has a laziness bias

StupidMoniker · May 26, 2006

SamFisher said:

Embellished? How? Where's the quote from Gore? I do know that you and the folks you're defending certainly embellished his wording to ay that "Al Gore says he invented the internet," which he did not ever say.
Click to expand...

You could look it up like I did. I provided you the exact words (took the initiative in creating the Internet). Gwayneco provided a longer quote below that contains the full sentence. I am not defending anyone, I am challenging FBs assertion that Gore did not embellish.

SamFisher said:

As to his actual role:
Do you not understand the common sense meaning of "take the initiative"? As far as I can tell (and please, prove me wrong if you know otherwise). Gore does seem to be one of the first senators to propose internent-friendly bills & legislation. How is that not "taking the initiative"? How is that even embellishing?
Click to expand...

The problem is not with the "take the initiative" half of the quote, it is with the "in creating the Internet" half of the quote. I am sure there are many engineers at Boeing that have helped make commercial aviation what it is today, but they did not play any part in creating heavier than air powered flight. When they came along, there had already been airplanes. When Gore came along, there was already an Internet. Gore did a lot to help make the Internet what it is today, but he played no role in it's creation, legislative or otherwise.

SamFisher · May 26, 2006

StupidMoniker said:

You could look it up like I did. I provided you the exact words (took the initiative in creating the Internet). Gwayneco provided a longer quote below that contains the full sentence. I am not defending anyone, I am challenging FBs assertion that Gore did not embellish.
Click to expand...

And you've been proven completely wrong. He did not embellish. he was the leader in congress as far as internet development and legislation went. That much is undisputed.

"Embellishing" is saying that he said he was the "father of the internet" or "invented the internet", which is what the Washignton Times, the RNC and the rest of the idiotocracy put out.

Actually, wait, that's not "embellishing" -- that's LYING.

The problem is not with the "take the initiative" half of the quote, it is with the "in creating the Internet" half of the quote. I am sure there are many engineers at Boeing that have helped make commercial aviation what it is today, but they did not play any part in creating heavier than air powered flight. When they came along, there had already been airplanes. When Gore came along, there was already an Internet. Gore did a lot to help make the Internet what it is today, but he played no role in it's creation, legislative or otherwise.
Click to expand...

Oh I see, so you're taking a "biblical" version of creation of the internet where it was hatched in a lab in 1969 - shockingly this is straight out of RNC talking points. No part of the internet was created after 1969 - therefore the phrasing is impermissible - and he must be delusional.

To hang you hat on this grammatical quirk is - and I'm trying to be civil - indicates that you're either 1. an idiot, or 2. being deliberately obtuse and intellecutally dishonest to play political grab-ass, just like the RNC was when they dreamed this whole thing up in 2000.

By the way, this whole thing is a great exercise in the supposed left wing media bias. The left wing media certainly did their part in spreading around this talking point - so much so that people still cling to it today despite the fact that it makes them look rather foolish.

gifford1967 · May 26, 2006

I knew what Gore had said vs. what the wingnut spin on what he said but, I didn't realize that Gore had played such a significant role in the creation of the internet. Couple this with what will likely be his extremely prescient and persistent alarms about global warming, and he is looking better all the time.

bnb · May 26, 2006

I think what's funny about the AL Gore and internet thing is that nobody really cares. It's used as the puch line for jokes...or to rile up some Democrats....but really...whether he said it, or was misquoted, or taken out of context...or whatever...nobody cares. Nobody took the comment seriously. Although it certainly gets under the skin of some people. Relax....let it go. Bush has certainly had many more misstatements (quite appart from his deliberate stuff).

It didn't lose him the election. It's probably quoted more by Leno, Letterman and OBrien than by the Major Media. It wasn't wingnut spin that attached the comment to him. It was simply a hook. It was funny. And people like funny.

StupidMoniker · May 26, 2006

SamFisher said:

"Embellishing" is saying that he said he was the "father of the internet" or "invented the internet", which is what the Washignton Times, the RNC and the rest of the idiotocracy put out.
Click to expand...

Embellishing is saying you took the initiative in creating something 10 years after it came into existence. Al Gore did plenty to promote the growth of the Internet, but zero to create it. I think you are the one being intellectually dishonest when you will not just admit that the Internet was around for a long time before Al Gore got involved.

Sishir Chang · May 26, 2006

FranchiseBlade said:

But sometimes facts are facts. They can not be interpreted more than one way.
Click to expand...

One would hope so but as the numerous debates on this forum show facts are often spun in various directions. For instance you often hear posters arguing with each other over really what constitutes a fact.

When you look at the situation with the media it gets even more complicated. Reporters don't have a god's eye view of things so they have to make the decisions regarding where and how they collect information. Further since we don't have unlimited times to absorb raw feed the news is edited and as we know depending on how the news is edited that can make a huge difference in what is reported.

They bent over backwards to accomodate an incorrect assertion in order to appear to be fair and balanced. The media screwed up. It isn't one person's word against another. There are numbers and math involved. The numbers added up quite differently than what Bush claimed, and despite these facts having been discovered the media just didn't report accurately.
Click to expand...

I know a lot of people get down on the media when they do things like put on a global warming skeptic with a global warming proponent since overwhelmingly the scientific community believes in global warming. This is where people get upset about being fair and balanced. The problem with this though is that if they didn't the counter charge comes into play that the media is just enforcing an orthodoxy and unwilling to allow counter claims to be heard. It become a no-win situation.

In regard to your specific example its not quite as clear cut as you make it to be. You're upset at the media for not being a fact checker on the President. While that is part of the media's role at the sametime the media is there to report on what the President says. If the President says that US tripled AIDS funding to Africa that is a fact that the President said that. The President may be wrong, may even be lying, but that doesn't change the fact that the President said it. In terms of fact checking that goes beyond reporting the straight story but into investigative journalism. In this case what you are asking for is not a journalism that just reports what they see.

As far as laziness in the media goes I agree that there is a lot of laziness and the media should be held accountable to maintaining a high standard but part of the problem is the nature of today's information society where every blogger is an instant fact checker out to get the major media. While there are several instances of major media getting things wrong or being flat out lazely there are way more times when they have gotten it right and bloggers wrong.

To get to the point what this comes down is to a matter of how much you trust the major media. In spite of Rathergate, Jayson Blair and reporting that Al Gore invented the Internet I will still trust the major media. That doesn't mean I don't maintain a certain amount of skepticism but in the end I will trust the CNN and the NYTimes over opinionjournal.com, dailykos and yes even Jon Stewart.

Sishir Chang · May 26, 2006

StupidMoniker said:

Embellishing is saying you took the initiative in creating something 10 years after it came into existence. Al Gore did plenty to promote the growth of the Internet, but zero to create it. I think you are the one being intellectually dishonest when you will not just admit that the Internet was around for a long time before Al Gore got involved.
Click to expand...

You're right that DARPANET existed long before Al Gore but that's not what we would consider the Internet (especially since you couldn't run Clutchfans on it). The Internet as we know it couldn't have existed without the funding to building the infrastructure to run it on so I don't think its too much of a stretch to say that Al Gore played a hand in the creation of the Internet anymore than its too much of a stretch to say that Ronald Reagan brought down the Soviet Union. Neither of them had a direct hand in either of those acheivements but that doesn't mean they don't deserve some of the credit.

gifford1967 · May 27, 2006

A Media Matters essay on the topic was just published. Some snippets below-

"Media Matters"; by Jamison Foser

The defining issue of our time is not the Iraq war. It is not the "global war on terror." It is not our inability (or unwillingness) to ensure that all Americans have access to affordable health care. Nor is it immigration, outsourcing, or growing income inequity. It is not education, it is not global warming, and it is not Social Security.

The defining issue of our time is the media.

...........

Eric Boehlert, author of the excellent new book Lapdogs: How the Press Rolled Over for Bush (Free Press, May 2006), has offered one example of the obsessive coverage the media gave Whitewater:

In the 24 months between Jan. 1994 and Jan. 1996, long before Monica Lewinsky entered the picture and back when Whitewater was about an alleged crooked land deal, Nightline devoted 19 programs to the then-unfolding scandal and investigation, for which no Clinton White House official was ever indicted.

And that's how it was for eight years: obsessive media coverage and hype of made-up Clinton "scandals" that never went anywhere because they never existed anywhere other than the fevered imaginations of a few far-right Clinton-haters and the credulous news media that took them seriously.

How bad did it get? As we're fond of pointing out, the Washington Post editorial board called for the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate Whitewater "even though -- and this should be stressed -- there has been no credible charge in this case that either the president or Mrs. Clinton did anything wrong." That's right: The Post called for an independent counsel to investigate "no credible charge."

Boehlert offered a comparison to the Bush era:

But during the 24 months between Sept. 2003 and Sept. 2005, Nightline set aside just three programs to the unfolding CIA leak investigation, for which Libby, an assistant to the president, was indicted. On the night of the Libby indictments, Nightline devoted just five percent of its program to that topic.

.........
Exactly one year ago, we referred to "the most obvious example" of this:

The same news organizations that pursued the Whitewater "scandal" as though it were Watergate, Teapot Dome, and the Lindbergh Baby all wrapped into one virtually ignored Bush's controversial sale of Harken Energy stock. The basic information about that sale -- that Bush, while serving as a Harken director and member of the company's audit committee, dumped more than 200,000 shares of the company's stock shortly before Harken publicly announced massive losses -- was publicly available long before Bush ran for president. Yet The Washington Post, to name one news outlet, gave the matter a total of 26 words of attention during the 2000 presidential campaign. The July 30, 1999, edition of the Post reported:

Even now, questions linger about a 1990 sale of Harken stock by Bush that was the subject of a probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

That's it. Twenty-six words.

Two major news organizations, the Associated Press and Bloomberg news, ran substantive articles about Bush's stock sale, based on documents that were released by the Securities and Exchange Commission during the 2000 campaign. The AP reported in September 2000:

George W. Bush, before he sold his stock in a Texas oil company, was fully aware that the firm was suffering from a severe cash crisis and was poised to lose millions, according to newly released records of a closed insider trading investigation of the sale.

"The full capacity of the company is dedicated toward resolving this liquidity crisis," Harken Energy Corp. President Mikel Faulkner told Bush and the other members of the board of directors two months before the $850,000 stock sale in June 1990.

[...]

The Harken documents released under FOIA detail Bush's knowledge of the company's problems.

As a Harken director, he received memos in spring 1990 that referred in stark terms to the company's cash-strapped condition as banks demanded it pay down its debts. One document said the company was in the midst of a "liquidity crisis" and another told Bush the company was "in a state of noncompliance" with its lenders.

Bush also was informed that a company plan to make a public stock offering to generate cash was being abandoned because one of its lenders objected.

"On the eve of filing this offering, the Bank of Boston refused to grant waivers and consents necessary to allow the offering to proceed," Harken said in a letter to the SEC in 1991. "Bank of Boston refused to alter its position and instead made demands that it be removed from the company's credit." The company solved the crisis when two of its biggest stockholders loaned it the $43 million it needed.

[...]

The SEC investigators never interviewed Bush about what else he might have known about the company's financial situation before selling the stock.

To sum up: In the months before the 2000 election, newly disclosed documents revealed that shortly before he dumped his Harken stock, George W. Bush had been told that the company faced a "liquidity crisis" and was "in a state of noncompliance" with lenders and that its plan to raise money was being abandoned. The documents revealed that the SEC -- which, at the time, was run by a close ally of Bush's father, then-President George H. W. Bush -- never bothered to interview Bush about his stock sale during its investigation of the matter.

And The New York Times completely ignored it. Completely. The Washington Post completely ignored it. USA Today completely ignored it. ABC, CBS and NBC? Ignored, ignored, ignored. CNN? CNN is an all-news channel; it has a whole day to fill with news every single day. Surely CNN managed to squeeze in a mention or two of new evidence that a major-party presidential candidate may have made a fortune in an insider-trading scheme that was covered up by cronies of his father the president? No, CNN didn't even mention it. Not a word.

..........

Again: Nobody should make the mistake of thinking this foolishness only applies to the Clintons and to Bush. By spectacular coincidence, Al Gore is also dishonest, according to journalists -- and everything is evidence of that premise, too. Even if it means making up quotes he never said, journalists will find a way to demonstrate his dishonesty. The classics -- the Internet, Love Canal, Love Story, et al -- should be well-known by now, so we won't repeat them. Instead, here's Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg, offering a new riff on an old favorite:

In a recent write-up of Gore's visit to the Cannes Film Festival to promote his new film on global warming, which premiered Wednesday in Los Angeles, [Arianna] Huffington hailed the "new Gore" as the "hottest star in town," beating out Bruce Willis and Tom Hanks. Gore told Huffington that this was his second trip to Cannes. "The first was when I was 15 years old and came here for the summer to study the existentialists -- Sartre, Camus.... We were not allowed to speak anything but French!" This, gushed Huffington, "may explain his pitch-perfect French accent." Perhaps. Though according to David Maraniss' biography of Gore, the former vice president's 15th summer was spent working on the family farm. Remember those stories about how Al Sr. said, "A boy could never be president if he couldn't plow with that damned hillside plow"? That was the same summer.

How dumb does Goldberg think we are?

First, Al Gore's "15th summer" occurred when he was 14 (work through it, Jonah, you'll figure it out). Maraniss's actual wording is "the summer of his fifteenth year," which also suggests that Gore was 14 at the time (ok, Jonah, we'll help: Your first year ends when you turn one year old. Therefore, your 15th year ends when you turn 15. Therefore, during your "fifteenth year," you're 14.) So, taking Gore's memory and Maraniss's writing as truth, the two statements aren't in any way contradictory, despite Goldberg's attempt to convince you that they are.

More significantly, as The American Prospect's Ezra Klein has explained: "As for which summer Gore spent in France, think about Goldberg's critique here: He's not arguing that Gore didn't take that trip, but that he's misremembering the year. This is the strike against Al Gore; that a trip he took almost 45 years ago might have happened at 14, or 16, rather than 15. Given our mind's learned tendency to drift towards multiples of five, this is pretty weak sauce. Goldberg, a bright guy, isn't actually making this critique -- it's more of a meta-critique, trying to dredge up old doubts about Gore and his tendency to embellish."

Even more significantly: Who cares? Seriously, who cares? Is Goldberg suggesting Gore didn't really work on the farm? No, he can't be -- not honestly, anyway: he has previously acknowledged that Gore did. Is he seriously suggesting that Gore didn't really travel to France as a teen? No, he isn't doing that, either. So what is he suggesting? He's trying to demonstrate that Al Gore is a liar because maybe he really went to France when he was 16, not 15.

That's how weak the evidence is that Al Gore is a liar. And yet, his purported dishonesty and tendency to exaggerate is the underlying premise of so much media coverage of him.

At least Goldberg invented his own absurd anti-Gore story. The New York Times and countless other media elites -- David Broder, Tim Russert, and Chris Matthews among them -- chose instead to take the lead from the Globe supermarket tabloid.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200605260016

FranchiseBlade · May 27, 2006

Sishir Chang said:

One would hope so but as the numerous debates on this forum show facts are often spun in various directions. For instance you often hear posters arguing with each other over really what constitutes a fact.

When you look at the situation with the media it gets even more complicated. Reporters don't have a god's eye view of things so they have to make the decisions regarding where and how they collect information. Further since we don't have unlimited times to absorb raw feed the news is edited and as we know depending on how the news is edited that can make a huge difference in what is reported.
Click to expand...

I am in agreement that there is often legitimate differences about what is and isn't a fact.

Sishir Chang said:

I know a lot of people get down on the media when they do things like put on a global warming skeptic with a global warming proponent since overwhelmingly the scientific community believes in global warming. This is where people get upset about being fair and balanced. The problem with this though is that if they didn't the counter charge comes into play that the media is just enforcing an orthodoxy and unwilling to allow counter claims to be heard. It become a no-win situation.
Click to expand...

I also like it when stories present differing sides of the same issue. I think the better informed we are from all perspectives the better it is. I think NPR on the whole does the best job of news media I have seen presenting different sides to the stories. But it is better to have multiple news sources and see the different ways the same story can be presented.

There are times such as with certain mathematical facts that there is only one side. Either the numbers are correct or they aren't.

Sishir Chang said:

In regard to your specific example its not quite as clear cut as you make it to be. You're upset at the media for not being a fact checker on the President. While that is part of the media's role at the sametime the media is there to report on what the President says. If the President says that US tripled AIDS funding to Africa that is a fact that the President said that. The President may be wrong, may even be lying, but that doesn't change the fact that the President said it. In terms of fact checking that goes beyond reporting the straight story but into investigative journalism. In this case what you are asking for is not a journalism that just reports what they see.
Click to expand...

I understand and agree the media should report what the president said. They should report it even if he is wrong, or maybe especially if he is wrong.

What I object to is that after it comes out that he is wrong, they continue to just keep repeating the figure. The mythical numbers should have been dispelled and never again presented as if there is a chance they were correct. I am not upset at all the media reported Bush's initial claim. I am upset that they continued to keep parroting that information as if it were fact, and as if it were correct. Then once other people were getting the true facts and accurate information out there, the media presented it as a he said/she said argument, where it was just a matter of picking which one to believe in. That is shameful. The truth was known, but nobody in the major media presented it as the truth.

It also should not be seen as a sign of bias towards one side or the other to report accurate numbers, and disspell inaccurate ones.

Sishir Chang said:

As far as laziness in the media goes I agree that there is a lot of laziness and the media should be held accountable to maintaining a high standard but part of the problem is the nature of today's information society where every blogger is an instant fact checker out to get the major media. While there are several instances of major media getting things wrong or being flat out lazely there are way more times when they have gotten it right and bloggers wrong.

To get to the point what this comes down is to a matter of how much you trust the major media. In spite of Rathergate, Jayson Blair and reporting that Al Gore invented the Internet I will still trust the major media. That doesn't mean I don't maintain a certain amount of skepticism but in the end I will trust the CNN and the NYTimes over opinionjournal.com, dailykos and yes even Jon Stewart.
Click to expand...

I still watch the main stream media, and read some blogs. I don't take either as 100% accurate, and I do look to see what sources are used in either case. I just feel that the media can and should do better. I think they have a duty to inform the public, and keep them informed. When they fail, or inform them incorrectly then the nation can suffer. Votes and opinions are changed. The course our nation takes is changed. It does have an effect.

SamFisher · May 29, 2006

StupidMoniker said:

Embellishing is saying you took the initiative in creating something 10 years after it came into existence. Al Gore did plenty to promote the growth of the Internet, but zero to create it. I think you are the one being intellectually dishonest when you will not just admit that the Internet was around for a long time before Al Gore got involved.
Click to expand...

No, I'm being perfectly honest: If you really read/hear that quote and think that he's implying that he invented the internet in a laboratory, you're an idiot with deficient comprehension skills or being a sackless partisan b**** to the point of caricature. Not sure which one you are, perhaps a poll is in order.

StupidMoniker · May 29, 2006

SamFisher said:

No, I'm being perfectly honest: If you really read/hear that quote and think that he's implying that he invented the internet in a laboratory, you're an idiot with deficient comprehension skills or being a sackless partisan b**** to the point of caricature. Not sure which one you are, perhaps a poll is in order.
Click to expand...

I read the quote and think he is implying that he called for something to be created that did not exist. When Kennedy said we were going to send a man to the moon, it wasn't after we had already sent a man to orbit the moon and landed some lunar rovers. There had not even been manned spaceflight when Kennedy called for sending a man to the moon. Therefore, I would have no problem with Kennedy saying he took the initiative in creating the Apollo program, even though he didn't invent the spacecraft in a laboratory. I would have a big problem with someone claiming that took the initiative in putting a man on the moon if they started working for NASA in 1968.

When Al Gore became a congressman, the Internet was up and running. He helped to expand it and make it what it is today, but he had no part in it's creation. He didn't come up with the idea, he didn't call for funding a new networking project, he just helped that already existing Internet to grow and expand. I have no problem with crediting Al Gore with helping to bring the Internet to the people, but he certainly did not create it, no matter how much name calling you want to do.

FranchiseBlade · May 29, 2006

StupidMoniker said:

When Al Gore became a congressman, the Internet was up and running. He helped to expand it and make it what it is today, but he had no part in it's creation. He didn't come up with the idea, he didn't call for funding a new networking project, he just helped that already existing Internet to grow and expand. I have no problem with crediting Al Gore with helping to bring the Internet to the people, but he certainly did not create it, no matter how much name calling you want to do.
Click to expand...

It wasn't the internet at that time. It was in an early incarnation and would eventually become the internet. It wasn't the internet as the internet is defined today, that is for sure.

Vincent Cerf and Newt even agree that Gore was integral in making the internet what it is today. Read the whole context. Gore wasn't trying to claim that he invented something new. He was saying that he took the initiative in creating what we now use as the internet. Others back up his claim. The fact that it was used among govt. agencies back then means it was a networking system, but not really what is known as the internet today. Gore didn't claim that he created it out of nothing. He didn't deny that there was something there before he worked on making it what it is today.

He wasn't embellishing, and he certainly wasn't claiming to have invented the internet as some people still claim today.

Invisible Fan · May 29, 2006

FranchiseBlade said:

He wasn't embellishing, and he certainly wasn't claiming to have invented the internet as some people still claim today.
Click to expand...

Yet the public won't even believe that....

wnes · May 29, 2006

The "Liberal" bias in major media is a myth. Look no further than the vastly different ways two First Couples' marriage problems were treated in several supposedly "liberal-leaning" news media:

http://mediamatters.org/items/200605260003

Coming soon to The New York Times? Globe reports Bush marriage breakup

Summary: In Patrick Healy's recent front-page New York Times article on the state of the Clintons' marriage, Healy noted that a "tabloid photograph" of former President Bill Clinton "was enough to fuel coverage in the gossip pages." Media Matters does not endorse the decision by elite media figures to take their cues from tabloids, but if they do so, we expect them to be consistent. As it happens, the cover of the May 29 edition of the Globe magazine contains a headline about another high-profile political couple: "BUSH MARRIAGE BREAKUP! EXCLUSIVE! SEPARATE LIVES IN THE WHITE HOUSE."

In his May 23 front-page article in The New York Times, staff writer Patrick Healy asserted that "[w]hen the subject of Bill and Hillary Clinton comes up for many prominent Democrats these days, Topic A is the state of their marriage" and how it "might affect Mrs. Clinton's possible bid for the presidency in 2008." Healy offered no specific reasons for this purported interest among "prominent Democrats" aside from the amount of time the Clintons spent apart, a mention of a decade-old affair, and a reference to year-old "concern[]" over a "tabloid photograph showing Mr. Clinton leaving B.L.T. Steak in Midtown Manhattan late one night after dining with a group that included Belinda Stronach, a Canadian politician." Healy continued: "The two were among roughly a dozen people at a dinner, but it still was enough to fuel coverage in the gossip pages."

It was also enough to fuel a front-page New York Times article, and the rapt attention of the Washington press corps, as Media Matters has documented.

Healy did not identify the "tabloid" in question, but he seems to be referring to the Globe magazine, which in the spring of 2005 ran a headline about Clinton and Stronach that read "Bill caught with blonde AGAIN! New divorce battle with Hillary."

Media Matters does not endorse the decision by The New York Times, NBC's Tim Russert, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, The Washington Post's David Broder, and countless other elite media figures to take their cues from tabloids like the Globe, or to pry into the personal lives of political figures. But if they are going to do so, we expect them to be consistent. [emphasis mine]

As it happens, the cover of the May 29 edition of the Globe contains another sensational headline about another high-profile political couple:

BUSH MARRIAGE BREAKUP!

EXCLUSIVE!

SEPARATE LIVES IN THE WHITE HOUSE

* Nasty fights
* Booze problems
* Laura urges counseling

On Pages 20 and 21, the Globe announces "Bush and Laura's 29-year marriage FALLS APART," adding: "They barely talk to each other," "[t]hey argue when they do speak," and "he's afraid he'll hit the bottle." Quotes in the article attributed to "a longtime friend" include the assertion that "[w]hen the cameras aren't on, they have nothing to do with one another," and that "[f]or all practical purposes, they've broken up." The "family friend" continues: "After their last fight over booze, they just stopped talking -- period." The Globe's report that Laura Bush is concerned that President Bush may "hit the bottle" is reminiscent of a September 21, 2005, National Enquirer article about "Bush's booze crisis," which reported: "Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again."

Media Matters wonders when we can expect The New York Times to assign a reporter to tally the number of nights the Bushes spend together and to conduct 50 interviews with Republicans to assess their interest in the state of the Bush marriage, or in President Bush's reported relapse -- and when it will run a 2,000-word front-page article on the topic. If it does so, we wonder if Broder will refer to the article as "anything but unsympathetic" to the Bushes.

----------------------------

Globe's front cover:

Deckard · May 29, 2006

originally posted by StupidMoniker: I read the quote and think he is implying that he called for something to be created that did not exist. When Kennedy said we were going to send a man to the moon, it wasn't after we had already sent a man to orbit the moon and landed some lunar rovers. There had not even been manned spaceflight when Kennedy called for sending a man to the moon. Therefore, I would have no problem with Kennedy saying he took the initiative in creating the Apollo program, even though he didn't invent the spacecraft in a laboratory. I would have a big problem with someone claiming that took the initiative in putting a man on the moon if they started working for NASA in 1968.
Click to expand...

SM, I saw JFK give his speech at Rice University (a fine institution, even if they let texxx in), having been lucky enough to have liberal parents that thought it worthwhile to take me out of school to attend. You might say that it was one of those defining moments in my life, the ones that stick with you, and that you look back upon like they happened yesterday, despite the intervening years. It was September 12, 1962. We had had our first manned spaceflight on May 5, 1961, when Alan Shepard became the first American in space during a fifteen-minute suborbital flight, and John Glenn made the first orbital flight nine months later. http://www.answers.com/topic/human-spaceflight

In other words, we had already orbited the Earth, although we were continuing to play catch-up to the Russians. Kennedy made the political decision to commit us to going to the Moon, when it truly seemed like something out of science fiction. Scientists didn't doubt that it was possible, someday, to make the journey, but most believed that it would take decades, not less than a decade. Through the force of his charismatic personality and popularity with the public, he put us on course to walking on the Moon... something only dreamt of for thousands of years.

Sorry to pull a Hayes on you, but you gotta get your facts straight.

A video clip of the speech:

http://webcast.rice.edu/speeches/19620912kennedy.html

One should view it remembering that it was a political visit to Texas, as well has the chosen place for his announcement. Thus a few references that may seem a bit obscure to some today.

StupidMoniker · May 29, 2006

Kennedy called for sending a man to the moon in front of congress on May 25, 1961. So, he either decided to push for that plan before Shepard's flight or slightly after. I happen to think it takes more than 3 weeks to go from contemplating an idea to presenting it to congress, but that is just me. While it is nice that your parents took you to see him at Rice, that is not the only occasion upon which JFK spoke of going to the moon.

Here is a link to an article commemorating the event in case you think my facts are not straight.

Forums

Do you think the Major Media has a ____ bias?

Do you think the major media has a _______ bias?

Liberal

Conservative

Neutral

SamFisher Contributing Member

gwayneco Contributing Member

SamFisher Contributing Member

CBrownFanClub Contributing Member

StupidMoniker I lost a bet

SamFisher Contributing Member

gifford1967 Contributing Member
Supporting Member

bnb Contributing Member

StupidMoniker I lost a bet

Sishir Chang Contributing Member

Sishir Chang Contributing Member

gifford1967 Contributing Member
Supporting Member

FranchiseBlade Contributing Member
Supporting Member

SamFisher Contributing Member

StupidMoniker I lost a bet

FranchiseBlade Contributing Member
Supporting Member

Invisible Fan Contributing Member

wnes Contributing Member

Deckard Blade Runner
Supporting Member

StupidMoniker I lost a bet

Share This Page

About ClutchFans

Rockets Content

Support ClutchFans!

Do you think the Major Media has a ____ bias?

Do you think the major media has a _______ bias?

Liberal

Conservative

Neutral

SamFisher Contributing Member

gwayneco Contributing Member

SamFisher Contributing Member

CBrownFanClub Contributing Member

StupidMoniker I lost a bet

SamFisher Contributing Member

gifford1967 Contributing Member Supporting Member

bnb Contributing Member

StupidMoniker I lost a bet

Sishir Chang Contributing Member

Sishir Chang Contributing Member

gifford1967 Contributing Member Supporting Member

FranchiseBlade Contributing Member Supporting Member

SamFisher Contributing Member

StupidMoniker I lost a bet

FranchiseBlade Contributing Member Supporting Member

Invisible Fan Contributing Member

wnes Contributing Member

Deckard Blade Runner Supporting Member

StupidMoniker I lost a bet

Share This Page

gifford1967 Contributing Member
Supporting Member

gifford1967 Contributing Member
Supporting Member

FranchiseBlade Contributing Member
Supporting Member

FranchiseBlade Contributing Member
Supporting Member

Deckard Blade Runner
Supporting Member