It’s scary when the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation—the committee with oversight of telecommunications, the committee that is addressing the Net neutrality question—displays a remarkable degree of ignorance about the nature of the Net itself. If you haven’t listened to Rob Walch’s Podcast411 interview with Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alasaka), it’s an eye-opener (well, at least an ear-opener).

The folks over at “The Bold Headed Broadcast” have done a mashup of some of Stevens’ remarks to highlight the senator’s failure to grasp the nature of the Net. Interestingly, when a MySpace user posted the video to his site, MySpace cancelled the account. According to Wired News, the site owner, Andrew Raff, finds MySpace’s action “a foreshadowing of the kind of repression of speech that could become commonplace if phone companies prevail in their efforts to create a two-tiered internet.” (The account was later reinstated.)

Fortunately, nobody at YouTube has yanked the video. Here it is.

Update: Oh, Rob. I missed the fact that Stevens delivered this as a speech to his Senate committee and that you heavily selected and edited that file, adding your own voice, to create an “interview.” You couldn’t disclose this? I agree with Allan Jenkins that the result is “cheap, tacky snarkiness.” Context is everything. Although, also like Allan, I still agree with the sentiment.