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</style><title>Congress Spends Several Hours Pretending to Understand Internet : The New Yorker</title></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><base href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/2013/10/congress-spends-several-hours-pretending-to-understand-internet.html#entry-more"><span class="Apple-Mail-URLShareWrapperClass" contenteditable="false"><span class="Apple-Mail-URLShareSharedContentClass" style="position: relative !important; " applecontenteditable="true"><div id="article" onscroll="articleScrolled();" class="auto-hyphenated" style="-webkit-locale: en; "><div class="page" style="font-family: Palatino, Georgia, Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 1.4; "><h1 class="title" style="text-align: center;"><font size="4">CONGRESS SPENDS SEVERAL HOURS PRETENDING TO UNDERSTAND INTERNET</font></h1>
<p style="font-size: 14px; "><img alt="upton-hearing-580.jpeg" src="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/borowitzreport/upton-hearing-580.jpeg" width="580" height="385" class="reader-image-large"></p>
<p><font size="3"><b>WASHINGTON</b>—In an impressive white-knuckle performance on live television today, members of Congress spent several hours in a hearing room pretending to understand the Internet.</font></p>
<p><font size="3">Beginning this morning, members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee devoted four hours to grilling Web-site contractors about site architecture, Web traffic, software, and other I.T. concepts about which their ignorance is nearly complete.</font></p>
<div><p><font size="3">“As members of this committee, we are supposed to have a deep understanding of the technology involved in the health-care Web site,” said Chairman Fred Upton (R-Michigan). “So it was absolutely imperative for us to fake that we do.”</font></p>
<p><font size="3">For the duration of the hearings, the Web contractors offered detailed testimony about “end-to-end testing,” “enterprise identity management,” and other technical concepts to a group of elected officials who can barely use e-mail.</font></p>
<p><font size="3">“I would say that, to a man, we did not understand ninety-nine per cent of that computer nonsense they were going on about,” Chairman Upton said. “To me it was a whole lot of blahbitty-blahbitty-blah. I hope it wasn’t too obvious.”</font></p>
<p><font size="3">Rep. Upton said that “looking serious and nodding our heads a lot” contributed to the illusion that committee members had even scant comprehension of what was being discussed.</font></p>
<p><font size="3">“At the end of the day, a lot of it came down to not asking the questions you really wanted to ask,” he said. “Like, ‘What exactly is a Web site?’”</font></p>
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