Quick Fact: Morris revives Al Gore “invented the Internet” and Love Story smears
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 17th, 2009 5:45 am by HL
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.
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 : 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.'”
