Fun fact...what Al Gore said about his role in the internet is largely correct. The actual quote that people turned into "I invented the internet" was:

> "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system".

This is true. He was the first major politician to publicly recognize the potential of a large interlinked network, and he pushed hard for the expansion of ARPANET and public access to it. Would we have the internet today without him? Probably, but arguably it would be a number of years behind where it is and might not look like it does now since the drivers very well might have been the large "walled-garden" systems like CompuServe and America Online rather than public infrastructure. Without the expansion of ARPANET into the Internet, there would have been no common infrastructure for the World Wide Web.

Vint Cerf, co-creator of TCP/IP which makes him one of the actual original "inventors" of the internet, wrote a piece defending Gore on this topic. This part gets pretty much to the point:

> "Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

>No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time."

Basically, right-wing radio took a significant accomplishment that Gore made and turned it into an insult. It kind of reminds me of the McDonald's "too hot coffee" lawsuit in that way.

Beat me to it

Came here to say this!