At the American Thinker, Timothy Birdnow notes that PBS’s transcript of Obama’s jobs/NFL kickoff speech on Thursday doesn’t include the following mistake by the president:
The New York Times transcript has the following quote:
“We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party. 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 — (applause) — launch the National Academy of Sciences, set up the first land grant colleges. (Applause.) And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.”
AdvertisementBut how does it appear in the PBS 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. And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.”
So PBS has purposely altered a transcript containing a major gaffe by the President.
As Birdnow notes, “Lincoln did not join the Republicans until 1856, over two years after the party was founded. The first Republican convention was held in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854.” Google were big Obama backers in 2008; perhaps wishing to minimize (I keed, I keed) the green company’s ginormous electric expenditures, the president unfortunately didn’t take advantage of their primary service, a search engine.
Byron York emails Glenn Reynolds to note that, as the Professor puts it, PBS is “lazy, not dishonest.” They’re working from the prepared text that was given to the press before the speech; the Lincoln reference was an ad-lib by Obama (once again, when Obama goes off the ‘prompter and improvises, bad things happen). But:
On the other hand, reader Mike Macedonia writes: “PBS still has not fixed and the moderator is deleting comments about it.” They should really post a note; the page says it’s a “transcript,” not a “prepared text,” and there’s a difference. And if they’re deleting comments without posting an explanation, well, that’s tacky.
Hey, as PBS’s Tavis Smiley said shortly before Obama took office, “Harry Reid, put down the crack pipe. You don’t work for Barack Obama? We’re all working for Barack Obama.”
While most of the rest of us have since moved on (not to mentioning thinking that the president worked for the American people, not the other way around), the legacy media keeps earning their pay.
Update: Some great catches by Ed Morrissey:
In yesterday’s OOTD, I noted that the President went off script to deliver a lecture on the origins of the Republican Party, only like so many lectures delivered by Barack Obama, it consisted of misinformation. Don’t worry, though — the media is actually covering this gaffe. For instance, Tom Maguire finds Time Magazine having to correct the record on Lincoln:
He gives a good speech, but he’s loose with the facts. He called Abraham Lincoln the “founder” of the Republican Party. Nope. Lincoln was not the founder of the party; he wasn’t even the first Republican nominee (John Fremont was, in 1856). Lincoln was, of course, the first Republican to be elected president.
Great work by Time, huh? Only this piece wasn’t written this week. It was written in September 2008, and fact-checked Mike Huckabee, not Barack Obama. And guess who wrote this historical correction? Time Magazine’s Jay Carney … who now works at Barack Obama’s press secretary. They don’t talk to each other much in this White House, do they?
And as Ed adds regarding PBS, “Note well that PBS specifically calls this a ‘transcript,’ not the prepared text. A ‘transcript’ is the verbatim rendering of what actually was said … or it should be, anyway.”
Update (8:30 AM PDT): As spotted by a Hot Air commenter about ten minutes ago, PBS quietly inserts the Lincoln gaffe back in, adding:
EDITOR’S NOTE: The original transcript provided on this page, as was noted, reflected the president’s remarks as prepared for delivery and released by the White House. This transcript has been updated to reflect the remarks as delivered and released by the White House.
Though no specific mention of what was updated. Compare this with the original, which Birdnow screencapped for a before and after:
Update: Welcome Hot Air readers; Ace adds an interesting conundrum for Time magazine:
Did Lincoln Sort of Found the GOP? Check out Tom Maguire’s update, noting Lincoln’s co-founding of the Illinois GOP party.
Of course, if he can be said to have founded the party, Time Magazine owes Mike Huckabee a very belated apology.
Maybe someone (paging Mr. Tapper) could ask Press Secretary Carney on Monday; it wouldn’t be first time 2008 has echoed badly for the administration in recent weeks.
When I heard a news report on NPR that a ship which had once launched air strikes against Japan was helping in the disaster relief earlier this year, I couldn’t believe it. I thought we’d retired all those old helicopter carriers, like in the ’70′s. But they made a big point of it, citing its long, heroic history.
So, I googled it. They, and half the media reporting, had merely cribbed a wire service story which must have been written in an internet-free zone, because it took me exactly 30 seconds to determine that it was a ship of the same name, but of an entirely different class and era. It could not have possibly bombed Japan, because it didn’t even exist, yet, nor for 30 years later. It also is not an aircraft carrier, at all, but an amphibious assault vessel. By the way, on the NPR website, it had a picture of, you guessed it, a WW2 carrier, with planes taking off.
Now, class, let us ask ourselves:
Don’t they do any research, at all? If not, why would we ever listen to them?
Do they know so little about history, war, or navies in general, that they are unaware that ship names are used over and over again, since the dawn of sailing? The British have had an “Ark Royal” in their fleet since Henry VIII. Wow! He had aircraft carriers? Who knew?
How can they think they’re smarter than us, when they’re so effing stupid?
And in the case of NPR, we pay for this stupidity.
Class is over. Have a nice day.
Another note to the history-challenged Obama:
Land grants and transcontinental railroads were main party goals for the 1850s Republicans (and Whigs before them). They couldn’t get them enacted because Democrats stood in their way. (Land grants and transcontinental railroads would have resulted in more territories becoming states. Free states. And if that happened the slave-state Democrats would have lost their precarious balance of power in Congress/Senate.
So the Dems blocked them tooth-and-nail. (Sort of like the Dems would fight Civil Rights tooth-and-nail-and-water-cannon a hundred years later.)
Lincoln was only able to enact the programs because when the South (Democrats) bolted from the Union, there weren’t enough Democrats left in Congress/Senate to block their enactment anymore.
Epic fail, Smartest President Ever (and his White House speech writers flunkies).
Remember when Sarah Palin visited the Paul Revere Museum?
Remember when she made a statement regarding the actions of the Night of Paul Revere’s ride?
Remember how all the media, including PBS, roundly criticized her and wasted not the slightest effort to find ‘historical experts’ to aid them in criticizing her for her ‘stupidity?’
Remember how, when the experts confirmed that she was right, the media immediatly pivoted to how ‘stupid’ shw was for not quoting history clearly?
.
Yeah, lazy not biased!
Right!
Although Obama’s gaffe and the subsequent airbrushing of it by PBS may seem to be no big deal (in the overall scheme of things in 2011) it is actually quite important that the “error” was caught and brought to the public’s attention, thus forcing PBS to correct the record and acknowledge the “error.” It’s tedious having to maintain a 24-7-365 vigilance over the Leftist-infected “mainstream” media in order to combat the bias but the stakes are too high NOT to maintain that vigilance.
I am so thankful for sites like PJM, Hot Air and others who maintain the vigilance like sentries standing a post.
Amen and amen.
Abraham Lincoln had little to do with establishing the transcontinental railroad and the National Academy of Sciences and land grant colleges. See http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2011/09/lincoln-transcontinental-railroad.html and Back to Basics for the Republican Party for more information.
Guys,
The first thing PBS posted was what Obama planned to say. Then he said what he said, and they updated the posting with an updated transcript of what he actually said.
Helped Establish is the same as founding. GOP.com has the following text on it.
“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
Helped Establish is the same as founding.
LMAO! Okay…
His writing may have been an inspiration to the founders of the GOP – but he was not a founder. He may have actually helped create the IL party per the article but it’s not the same thing with the National party.
Regarding NPR, they only corrected the record when the favorable-to-Obama error was called out numerous times – after deleting a lot of posts critically calling it to their attention, they mislabeled it as a transcript leading people to believe it IS what he said, then when they were finally forced to change it they didn’t acknowledge their error. Yeah, nothing to see here.
http://www.gop.com/index.php/issues/heroes/abraham_lincoln-1/
Abraham Lincoln
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.
Read more: http://www.gop.com/index.php/issues/heroes/abraham_lincoln-1/#ixzz1XcaOnKZ8
http://www.nyc.gov/html/records/rwg/html/96/immig.html
Immigration was a core belief of a founder of the Republican party, Abraham Lincoln….