NBC, Now Fox


Boosting the Buffet Rule headed for a vote (and defeat) in the U.S. House, President Obama a little over a week ago told students (official transcript, here) at Lorain County (Ohio) Community College

Somebody gave me an education.  I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.  Michelle wasn’t.  But somebody gave us a chance -- just like these folks up here are looking for a chance. ..

And now it's our turn to be responsible.   Now it's our turn to make sure the next generation has the same opportunities we do.

Barack Obama, Slate's John Dickerson argues, used the "silver spoon" metaphor at least five times before it was clear Mitt Romney would be the 2012 GOP presidential nominee.      Still, at least one notable at  Fox News must have felt threatened by a president suggesting that successful persons should give a little back to their fellow Americans.        The following day, anchor/anchorman/anchorperson Steve Doocy quoted Obama to Mitt Romney as asserting "unlike some people, I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth."
Obama never had said "unlike some people," which would have significantly altered his meaning.     It was, Doocy remarked, "fiery rhetoric aimed at people like you."    Romney, like any decent running back, saw an opening he couldn't pass up and used the opportunity to embrace his father's memory and accuse the President of criticizing success.     Widely criticized for manipulating President Obama's quote (which led to a slick Romney response) Doocy today, though stopping short of apologizing, acknowledged that he did not quote Obama accurately.    He told his Fox and Friends audience  

Last week President Obama talked about not being born with a silver spoon in his mouth. That was interpreted as a big dig at Mitt Romney.     When I was interviewing Governor Romney on this show I asked him about it. However, I did some paraphrasing that seemed to misquote the president. So to be clear, the president’s exact quote was, ‘I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.’ And I hope that clears up any confusion.”

One might ask, however, whether Doocy will be fired.      When an NBC video of George Zimmerman's comments the night he shot and killed Trayvon Martin was determined to have been edited, outrage understandably abounded on the right.       Even after an (unnamed) NBC News producer was fired and other individuals disciplined, Republican Party vice-chairman Rush Limbaugh remarked

But even the charitable view of this is not flattering to NBC and who they hire and what the mind-set is inside the network, and that is: We're still in slavery. We still have a racist to-the-core country. There have been no changes in it, and since that's true any time we find evidence of it, we are duty-bound to report it, and that's why the tape got edited. That's the charitable view of this.  The uncharitable view is that you have a bigot and a racist that works as a producer at NBC who saw an opportunity to further his own political point of view with a timely edit of the tape for the Today Show and put it out there thinking nobody would do anything to him because it happens all the time at our network and nobody ever says a thing about it. 

After a prominent anchor/anchorman/anchorperson performs admirably as a PR flack for the certain Repub presidential nominee, Fox News says "sorry for the confusion."      Now that an NBC News producer has been sacrificed for an egregious act, attention should be turned to the media outlet of the Republican Party and await any action which might demonstrate that Fox News is a legitimate, albeit highly biased, news operation.


Share |