John McCain Invented The BlackBerry and Other Silly Stories

The silly stories continue. While we are not hearing as much about pigs or lipstick, one of the top stories today is the report that John McCain invented the BlackBerry. AP reports:

Move over, Al Gore. You may lay claim to the Internet, but John McCain helped create the BlackBerry.

At least that’s the contention of a top McCain policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin. Waving his BlackBerry personal digital assistant and citing McCain’s work as a senator, he told reporters Tuesday, “You’re looking at the miracle that John McCain helped create.”

A McCain aide later dismissed the remark as “a boneheaded joke by a staffer.”

McCain has acknowledged that he doesn’t know how to use a computer and can’t send e-mail, one of the BlackBerry’s prime functions.

Holtz-Eakin’s argument is similar to one advanced by Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2000. Gore once boasted about “taking the initiative to create the Internet” through technological and educational policies. He later was mocked for claiming to have invented the Internet, although he never made such a claim.

Holtz-Eakin, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said McCain’s service on and leadership of the Senate Commerce Committee put him at the intersection of a number of economic interests, including the telecommunications industry.

The Arizona senator’s handling of regulation and deregulation of that industry in particular left him with the skills to help revive the economy amid a mortgage crisis, an energy crisis and a Wall Street meltdown, the adviser said.

Wait a minute, now they are really getting silly. Skills to revive the economy? This from John McCain, who has admitted he doesn’t know much about the economy.

This story has understandably been compared to the old “Gore invented the internet” story, which was a distortion of what he had had actually said on the subject. Those interested in how the media mistreated Al Gore with such stories might be interested in reading more on this here.

While Al Gore never stated he invented the internet, this story was twisted by the media to portray Gore as a serial exaggerator or a liar. Considering that McCain is already having trouble with the media revealing that he truly has been dishonest, one might wonder why an aide would risk saying something like this. Most likely it is because they no longer care at all what the media says about them, thinking they can succeed in demonizing the media along with everyone else who doesn’t follow their line. Soon Sarah Palin will be echoing Spiro Agnew in attacking the impudent corps of effete snobs and nattering nabobs of negativism who oppose them.

Or perhaps they want something to distract from the silly story which made the rounds yesterday that Sarah Palin purchased her own tanning bed for the governor’s mansion. Yes, this does counter the working mom reputation they are trying to develop for her, but buying a tanning bed is hardly the real reason we don’t want her anywhere near the White House.

1 Comment

  1. 1
    nader PAUL mckinney says:

    The American Ruse &
    when Black Friday comes.

    Honesty or lies?
    Compassion or greed?
    Intelligence or narrow-minded?
    Guts – or go along to get along?

    Ralph Nader
    Cynthia McKinney

    Ron Paul
    Mike Gravel
    Dennis Kucinich

    Jesse Ventura
    H. Ross Perot
    President Carter
    JFK RFK MLK Malcolm

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