The Dangers of Analogies, Exposed

First off, apologies to the Analogy Queen for the title of this post, but it was too good to pass up!

Next of all, I confess, I adore Karaoke Night at McGillan's. Nothing is more fun than bearing witness to a night of alcohol-fueled singing powered by a combination of 10% skill, 80% passion (and of course, the requisite 10% alcohol).

And without further ado, on to the crux of this post:

While at McGillan's tonight, I was talking to someone about "Tiny Dancer", about its part in the Almost Famous bus scene, and we realized after a while that we were talking about two different songs. I wasn't sure which one he had in mind. Neither was he for that matter. So I said I'd have to go look it up on the web when I got home. He replied with something about "innertubes".

Why was he suddenly talking about innertubing? I thought. Aloud of course. That's when I learned about Alaskan Senator Stevens' infamous intertubes speech (which was made last summer). The Jon Stewart references to it are particularly hilarious, so I'll quote them here, but read about the speech before you read the jokes!

Citations on The Daily Show

Stevens's speech was also ridiculed on seven episodes of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart which featured clips of Stevens's speech, illustrated first by Stevens's photo and later by photos of Gabby Hayes and of Grampa Simpson. In the first instance, on July 12, 2006, Stewart compared him to "a crazy old man in an airport bar at 3:00 am", then going on to answer his question, "Why?" with, "Maybe it's because you don't seem to know jack shit about computers or the Internet — but that's okay — you're just the guy in charge of regulating it."

Stevens's "series of tubes" were again referenced in a July 24, 2006 interview with John McCain, where Stewart asked, "You know, privately, can you pull Senator Stevens aside and go, 'It's not really literally tubes'?", to which McCain replied, "I wouldn't want to disillusion him."^[14]

On August 8, 2006, The Daily Show again referenced Stevens's quote in regard to BP's troubles with the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. Correspondent Rob Corddry started to explain the trouble with the pipeline, then turned it over to a recording of Ted Stevens saying, "It's not a big truck. It's, it's a series of tubes!"

On October 2, 2006, correspondent John Oliver remarked, "Everyone knows that Congresspeople are assigned to committees based on their greatest weakness! Why else would Senator Ted Stevens, a man more comfortable in the horse and buggy era, wind up in charge of regulating the Internet... which, he believes, is a series of tubes... a series of tubes through which other Congressmen can reach in and fondle sixteen-year-old boys?" (referring to the Mark Foley scandal.)

On December 18, 2006, host Jon Stewart, in an interview with then Presidential candidate Tom Vilsack, referenced the quote while plugging Vilsack's website, stating "Is that one of them Internets? ... Go visit him on the series of tubes."

On January 23, 2007 when talking about presidential candidates using the Internet as a campaign tool in the 2008 election, Stewart said "The candidates are now turning to the interwebs, a series of tubes..."

By March 2007, Stewart's tube references had become shorter, but possibly more frequent, e.g., "intertubes," or "tubular interwebs."