HTML Mayhem: I and B Tag Deprecation Was Wrong

I've been digging around the 'net trying to understand the logic behind the deprecation of the I (italics) and B (bold) HTML tags; and the introduction of the EM and STRONG tags that "sort of" replace them.

I get the theoretical difference between "presentation" and "semantics", but it made very little practical benefit, if any, to make the change. Don't unseat a standard unless the replacement is notably better. It's not. I and B could have been considered dual-purpose: indicating both presentation and semantics, which is good enough for both uses and has no known practical down-side.

The standards committee fixed something that wasn't broken, and introduced confusion in its place. Let's hold these committees to a higher standard and force them to keep their heads below the clouds where real work happens. Stop their esoteric philosophical mental masturbation.