No 8: Senator Ted Stevens (R-Ark.) doesn't know what the Internet is.
C-SPAN might not have the draw of, say, Grey's Anatomy, but if you watch it enough, you can pick up some real gems. Like this one: in the year's most famous case of metaphors gone awry, Sen. Ted Stevens declared on the Senate floor that "the Internet is not a big truck. It's a series of tubes." OK, politicians aren't always tech-savvy. And Stevens is old. So it's acceptable, right?
Here's the problem. This speech was in front of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, discussing the hot-button subject of network neutrality. Stevens is chairman of the committee. It didn't exactly make tech-savvy viewers too confident that such a powerful decision maker in American tech policy, well, didn't seem to understand what the Internet was. Thanks to the C-SPAN footage, the "Series of Tubes" became the latest Web-spawned catchphrase, following in the likes of "all your base are belong to us" and "snakes on a plane." Comedy Central anchor Jon Stewart lambasted the octogenarian senator in multiple episodes of "The Daily Show." And we here at CNET News.com think that Ted Stevens should be very proud that his botched metaphor merited a techno remix.
Click here for an audio file of Sen. Stevens' speech.
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