Reply #16: Internet "Tubes" Speech Turns Spotlight, Ridicule on Stevens "unfrozen caveman senator"

[L. Coyote]

July 15, 2006 by McClatchy Newspapers
Internet "Tubes" Speech Turns Spotlight, Ridicule onto Sen. Stevens
by Liz Ruskin - http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0715-06.htm

.... Stevens, R-Alaska, is enduring no end of ridicule in the blogosphere ... Snorting loudest are bloggers who are angry at Stevens for not adding a nondiscrimination provision - known as "net neutrality" - to the communications bill ....

"The Internet is not something you just dump something on. It's not a truck. It's a series of tubes," Stevens said ... "And if you don't understand, those tubes can be filled. And if they are filled, when you put your message in, it gets in line and it's going to be delayed by anyone that puts into that tube enormous amounts of material, enormous amounts of material."

.... he said he'd seen these delays firsthand: "I just the other day got - an Internet was sent by my staff at 10 o'clock in the morning on Friday and I just got it yesterday. Why? Because it got tangled up with all these things going on the Internet commercially."

Internet pundits greeted his explanations with a nonstop snigger fest, with extra helpings of derision, on sites such as boingboing, Daily Kos, Fark, MySpace and YouTube.

"Ted Stevens, unfrozen caveman senator" was the pronouncement on Wonkette. :rofl: