We Connive, You Decide

Here we go again. How many times does this have to happen before our collective response is, “…yawn…”?

At yesterday’s Labor Day presidential event, Teamsters President James Hoffa Jr. spoke about the need to vote Republicans out of office in 2012. Of course, Fox News had a completely different take on what Hoffa “meant” through selective editing.

As Media Matters reports, Fox edited video of Hoffa’s money quote to suggest, actually to just flat out lie and say that he was urging violence against Tea Party activists.

...fuller context included in other Fox segments makes clear that Hoffa wasn't calling for violence but was actually urging the crowd to vote out Republican members of Congress. During the segment that the bloggers have latched onto, Fox edited out the bolded portion of Hoffa's comments:

HOFFA: Everybody here's got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let's take these son of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong! Thank you very much!

Everyone jumped on the bandwagon including Andrew “ACORN, Shirley Sherrod, Planned Parenthood” Breitbart, and hacky tweets from Dana Loesch demanded that President Obama condemn Hoffa’s remarks and “sanctioning violence against fellow Americans” if he doesn’t. This after the fact that it was Fox’s Ed Henry who initially reported correctly on their own network that Hoffa as referring to voting Republicans out, and is on record with his tweet just 20 minutes after his report. Why tweet? Because he KNEW it was going to be taken out of context.

Now the pushback of course will be, or already has been that the left took Sarah Palin's "Don't retreat, RELOAD!" comment out of context as well. But I'm willing to wager that if you head over to the Teamsters' website, or any site associated with James Hoffa, you're not going to find a map with crosshairs targeting Republican districts. Just another day at Fox News.

We connive, you decide.

The Extended Obama/O'Reilly Interview - UPDATED

Here's the rest of the interview aired on The O'Reilly Factor Monday night that we didn't see on Sunday.







Besides the continuing interruptions that I mentioned in an earlier post, I found something very intriguing. Toward the end of the second clip, O'Reilly asks what the media can do better, and gets lost in the Obama's "professorial" style.  He doesn't want a real answer or a real solution apparently, you know, too much substance for Bill confuses him. But then O'Reilly specifically asks, "Do you think you're being treated fairly by Fox News now?" (4:10 mark). President Obama's answer was, "I would say, I think that the news guys try to do a good job...".

 Is it my conspiratorial mind running away with me, or does the video show a very poor job of trying to edit out the "try to" part of the statement and make it sound like Obama said, "I think that the news guys do a good job."

The very first thing that came to mind was the same type of horrible editing during Michelle Obama's "really proud of my country" moment. Since this is a video uploaded to YouTube and not from the official Fox News website, I'll reserve judgement.  But I can't help wondering if they just can't help themselves over at FNC to just tinker with video that is available for editing, unlike the live portion on Super Bowl Sunday.

(I'll replace the YouTube video with official FNC video when it becomes available and update my analysis.)

UPDATE: Conspiracy debunked! In the official video, now posted above, there is no glitch at the 4:10 mark of the second segment. So my apologies to the dweebs in the Fox News control room for accusing them of fudging with the video. You can see the YouTube glitch here. That is, if it is actually a glitch upon upload, bad initial video that was uploaded, or a purposeful attempt at changing the intent of the comment.

Nice Going, PBS

Isn't it wonderful to know that the Public Broadcasting System is so scared of a celebrity half-term governor that they would edit a speech given by Tina Fey during her acceptance of, of all things, The Mark Twain Prize?

Here's what they edited out:

“The success of Sarah Palin and women like her is good for all women—except, of course those who will end up, you know, like, paying for their own rape 'kit 'n' stuff. But for everybody else, it's a win-win. Unless you're a gay woman who wants to marry your partner of 20 years—whatever. But for most women, the success of conservative women is good for all of us. Unless you believe in evolution. You know—actually, I take it back. The whole thing's a disaster."

From the Kennedy Center website, here's part of the description of what the award is about:

...As a social commentator, satirist and creator of characters, Samuel Clemens was a fearless observer of society, who startled many while delighting and informing many more with his uncompromising perspective of social injustice and personal folly. He revealed the great truth of humor when he said "against the assault of laughter nothing can stand."

PBS said the speech was edited because of time concerns. It's a shame they didn't read what the Mark Twain Prize was all about before editing out the very crux of what Twain would have applauded. Guess they really needed those 40 seconds or so.