August 10, 2008
The Washington Post’s ombudsman says the newspaper’s original source for a quote that was used to portray Barack Obama as a megalomaniac now disputes the Post’s negative interpretation that has spread across cable TV, the Internet and even into a John McCain attack ad.
Post ombudsman Deborah Howell also acknowledges that neither Post reporter who relied on the misleading quote spoke directly with the source, checked out its accuracy, or made any independent effort to determine the context of the remark, which was made to a closed Democratic caucus meeting on Capitol Hill on July 29.
3 comments:
No reference to Bush's resort to the Air National Guard as his escape from Vietnam service should omit the fact that he suddenly stopped flying when it suddenly exposed him to drug testing.
And no reference to the McCain campaign's negative attack TV ads should omit noting the continued injection of religious bigotry into the 2008 political process.
As Robert Parry points out, the McCain spinmeisters quickly seized upon, and then rebroadcast only slightly tongue in cheek, the Washington Post's misquotation of Barack Obama's actual words, and their entire context, in order to completely reverse Obama's meaning: in an instant, an actual expression of personal humility was converted into a false accusation of arrogance and pride. The McCain "Moses" spot reamplified the falsehood by picking up and riffing upon the right wing media's recurrent theme that Obama supposedly has created a "cult like" following of young, mesmerized "worshippers", who consider him some sort of transcendant Messiah figure.
The patently false claim that Barack Obama views himself as a charismatic, self-styled prophet is deliberately calculated to offend a variety of people who take their Bible and their religious beliefs very seriously. This repeated theme - even when softened by sticking in the semi-humorous image of Charlton Heston making the Red Sea part just before the ad's tag line - remains fundamentally a subtle, pernicious appeal to religious prejudices.
This ploy should be recognized and condemned for what it is.
Bill from Saginaw
Thanks for mentioning Carolyn Kay at makethemaccountable.com. I just unsubscribed to MTA.com because she has become unhinged at HRC not winning the Democratic nomination. Absolutely unhinged. And I emailed to explain why I was unsubscribing and said that it appeared to me that she would rather see McCain win than Obama b/c Obama beat HRC. Her response was along the lines of, "If McCain wins, don't blame me." I hope she'll be able to sleep at night if McCain does win.
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