They simply can’t help themselves. I couldn’t stomach listening to the Stimulus Jr. speech to the bitter end, so bailed out and missed a major gaffe. What’s that, you ask? The Smartest Man In the Room made a gaffe? Never. Well, He did, and it’s a good one. This has been making the rounds of actual honest journalists who are not propagandists or die-hard Obamessiah fans, but I waited a full day because I knew the BBC wouldn’t have corrected it by now.
At 19:36 on the BBC’s liveblog of the speech, Beeboid Adam Blenford posted this at that point in the speech:
Switching back into a plea for unity, and invoking the memory of Abraham Lincoln: “A Republican president who mobilised government”.
He’s referring to this bit of the speech:
“We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party”.
Bzzzt! Wrong. Blenford, of course, had no idea. Sure, Lincoln was the first Republican to be elected President, but the Party itself was founded in 1854 by a Alvan Bovary, at an abolitionist meeting at a church in Wisconsin. Yes, that’s right: the Republican Party was basically founded to fight against slavery, in response to the looming Kansas-Nebraska Act, which would let new states decide if they were going to have slaves or not. Lincoln was a Whig at the time, and didn’t join until 1856, when he co-founded the Illinois branch. Sure, he did a great deal to help establish the Party, but did not found it.
This is the President of the US, folks. Now, it’s impossible to know if the Teleprompter of the United States had it wrong (which means the President is also ignorant and just read it out), or if the Community Organizer in Chief just winged it and told a lie so he could use Lincoln as a cudgel with which to beat intransigent Republicans in the House. But the President either got it wrong, or simply lied in front of Congress and the whole country, just to score a political point.
Blenford didn’t catch it, and Mark Mardell didn’t catch it, nor did Katty Kay. I don’t expect them to actually know anything about US history, as Mardell and the rest of the Beeboids covering the US display their ignorance time and time again. But the BBC then censored this mistake/lie in the transcript:
We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. But in the middle of a civil war he was also a leader who looked to the future – a Republican president who mobilized government to build the transcontinental railroad; launch the National Academy of Sciences; and set up the first land grant colleges.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time the BBC has…um…touched up one of the President’s speeches in order to give the audience the desired impression. In fact, they did it with His very first speech as President. They edited the footage to make Him appear to have said stronger words about environmental issues.
The problem here is twofold. First of all, there’s the fact that the dozen or so BBC employees you’re supposed to trust about how to understand US issues are woefully ignorant of their patch. Worse, their colleagues in the editing suite and in the BBC News Online offices are dishonest, and edit and censor news to fit the impression they want you to have. This time they’re just censoring a transcript to protect the leader of a foreign country. How pathetic is that?
Even if the very young person being paid very low wages to put up the transcript can’t be expected to know the place he copied and pasted it from had it wrong, this has been all over the web for more than 24 hours, and surely somebody with integrity at the BBC would have caught it by now. If there was anyone with integrity at the BBC when it comes to the President.
BBC, you are liars and propagandists. There really needs to be a complete purge of personnel before this can be fixed.
David – Yes, I noted the avoidance of that howler from the adult in the room. Now, imagine Bush had made a similar error..
It might be time to make a list of all the President’s errors which have been censored by the BBC, posted against all the ones by Bush and Palin that they rushed to report.
The BBC would have been all over it. From time to time we still get reminded how VP candidate Dan Quayle spelt ‘potato’ incorrectly. If Obama made such a petty slip it would be over before it began.
There are so few lefties about with any political integrity or self respect. This is how they have to conduct their politics, they know their beliefs are worthless.
Not knowing what year it was when signing the register at Westminster Abbey has to be in the top ten.
David from what I’ve read, both Mr Obama and Ms Clinton are ardent followers of Saul Alinsky. That fact explains most of what these people are doing to your country and to the West. It also explains why the bbc does what it does regarding dissembling of information and excusing the most outrageous behaviour when it is their own doing it.
They edit Obama to make him look better
They edit Lord Monckton to make him look worse
They are contemptible
David, remember Rahm Emanuel telling Obama that he had faced the toughest times that any president has ever faced. Apparently, Obama and his aides only remember Abraham Lincoln when they want to reach for some strained comparison between the two. History is not O’s best area of expertise. One could argue neither is economics. But I delight in the gaffs from this – the cleverest, best educated President the world has ever known. It’s very reassuring for us mere mortals.
We all remember his visiting all the 57 states of America but I bet we’ve forgotten how, during his election campaign, he claimed we should meet face-to-face with those we oppose just as Kennedy had met with Khrushchev when “we were on the brink of nuclear war.” Except Kennedy’s meeting with Khrushchev had occurred more than a year before the Cuban Missile Crisis and was regarded even by JFK as a failure. In fact, Khrushchev concluded from his meeting with JFK at Vienna that the young president would not be a barrier to an increased Soviet hardline as he went on to approve the building of the Berlin Wall and the placement of missiles in Cuba.
Also during the campaign he bragged about his uncle being part of the liberation of Auschwitz when it was the Soviets who liberated the camps in Poland. His uncle helped to liberate a satellite camp of Buchenwald. If he were truly so proud of his uncle’s service, he might have read up on those experiences and learned more about what actually happened.
At his inaugural, he didn’t know how many men had been president double-counting Cleveland. That was a small error, of course, but you’d think that for an Inaugural Address he or his speechwriters would get it right.
But all this pails into insignificance when contrasted with Joe Biden who declared that, “When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened.'” Yup. TV? Wonder if it was hi-def?
Come back George W. All is forgiven.
When the Stock Market crashed (in 1929), Herbert Hoover was President not Roosevelt.
In fact, Hoover was a decent man but a statist. The New Deal as FDR labelled his policies were as New Dealer, Rexford Tugwell, put it,
“practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started.”
It has been very convincingly argued that the statist approach turned a deep recession caused by a financial collapse into the Great Depression which was to last years. Even so the share even of Roosevelt’s government spending was to raise Hoover’s 8% of GNP to 10.2% by 1936. The National Debt never reached above 40% even under Roosevelt.
This makes today’s figures look quite horrifying.
Never mind Obama showing off about his mother’s side in WW2 – what about his father’s side? How many of the victims of the Mau-Mau racial atrocities have received compensation from Kenya yet?
That should read “pales into insignificance”. Note to self: I must not get so heated.
GOP.com is a left wing website I guess. You can parse what “Founder of the Republican Party” but I would have to say that “helped establish” is the same as “founding”
Check out the official republican website:
“Abraham Lincoln helped establish the Republican Party
with a speech denouncing an 1854 law, written by a Democrat Senator,
that allowed slavery to expand into the western territories. Two years
later, he co-founded the Illinois GOP. Lincoln was runner-up for the
1856 Republican vice presidential nomination and then became a
Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate.”Read more: http://www.gop.com/index.php/issues/heroes/abraham_lincoln-1/#ixzz1XblRRpVB
The Democrats being the party of slavery, were avoided by black voters until the 1960’s. See Southern Democrats.
The Republican Party was put on the electoral map by John C. Fremont successful showing in the 1856 election.
Republican were ‘ “free labor, free land, free men”
Free labor: Anti-slavery, independent artisans and businessmen
Free land: opposition to the plantation system which enabled the purchase of the best land stocked with slave labour to the exclusion of small, independent farmers.
Free men: Self explanatory.
Lincoln joined the movement, founded the Illinois branch. Branches already existed elsewhere in the NE.
“Helped establish” is not the same as “founding”. Helping to establish” is “helping to establish” and founding ” is “founding”.
If the GOP website suggests they are the same thing then the GOP website is not exact in its use of language.
I hope your political point is now made and in your eyes Obama is once again infallible. Hooray!
Control the edit suite and you control the message.
Control the message and you direct the story.
Direct the story and you shape opinion.
Shape opinion and you control everything.
How did Ms. Watts and her hapless market rate boss(es) try and bat that major gotcha away?
Interpreting events?
Enhancing the narrative?
Ah…
‘reflecting elements’
‘Newsnight’ edited sections of the speech to reflect the elements in it that referred to science as a way to give people an impression or montage of what President Obama said about science in his inauguration speech.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/susanwatts/2009/01/restoring_science_to_its_right.html?postId=80589472#comment_80589472
(amongst many others, well worth a re-read)
Harmless SKY & BBBC mentioned a lot.
Worth bigging up the former’s efforts in complemnt to BBBC here again.
http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=499