The media is embarrassing itself over Sarah Palin and Christine O’Donnell. By pointing out how dumb they believe these two conservative women to be this week the media has only pointed out how dumb and how low they’ll go to hurt these two women.
Yesterday there was a media firestorm because the Washington Post ran a story saying that Christine O’Donnell didn’t know that the establishment clause was in the Constitution. Hahahahaha. The media all had a big laugh and then put on their very serious grown up faces for the cameras and asked what this meant for the conservative movement in general and did this prove that Tea Partiers are all knuckle dragging Neanderthals who shouldn’t be trusted with the vote never mind a Senate seat.
Here’s the lede from the original Washington Post/AP ran, according to Weasel Zippers:
WILMINGTON, Del. — Republican Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell of Delaware on Tuesday questioned whether the U.S. Constitution calls for a separation of church and state, appearing to disagree or not know that the First Amendment bars the government from establishing religion.
Now that lede was based on the quote they put into the story they said went down like this:
Coons said private and parochial schools are free to teach creationism but that “religious doctrine doesn’t belong in our public schools.”
“Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state?” O’Donnell asked him. When Coons responded that the First Amendment bars Congress from making laws respecting the establishment of religion, O’Donnell asked: “You’re telling me that’s in the First Amendment?”
Her comments, in a debate aired on radio station WDEL, generated a buzz in the audience.
“You actually audibly heard the crowd gasp,” Widener University political scientist Wesley Leckrone said after the debate, adding that it raised questions about O’Donnell’s grasp of the Constitution.
Now this set off a firestorm in the media and all sorts of television pundits sounded off on this.
The problem? That’s not what happened. And the Washington Post knows it too because last night they went back and rewrote the story.
The lede now reads:
WILMINGTON, Del. — Republican Christine O’Donnell challenged her Democratic rival Tuesday to show where the Constitution requires separation of church and state, drawing swift criticism from her opponent, laughter from her law school audience and a quick defense from prominent conservatives.
Why the change in the lede. Well the rewritten story now actually tells what happened between Coons and O’Donnell. And guess what, Christine O’Donnell is absolutely right in what she’s saying and wasn’t confused at all.
“Where in the Constitution is separation of church and state?” O’Donnell asked while Democrat Chris Coons, an attorney, sat a few feet away.
Coons responded that O’Donnell’s question “reveals her fundamental misunderstanding of what our Constitution is. … The First Amendment establishes a separation.”
She interrupted to say, “The First Amendment does? … So you’re telling me that the separation of church and state, the phrase ‘separation of church and state,’ is in the First Amendment?”
So it’s clear now that the reporter lied. Perhaps the reporter didn’t know that the “Separation of church and state” didn’t appear in the Constitution. But don’t they have editors?
And all that gasping and laughing from the Widener law students kind of makes Widener look prety bad that they didn’t know it either.
The conversation relayed in the original piece is not close to what actually happened. The newspaper either lied or were incredibly bad at their job. But it does seem they become incredibly bad at their job when covering conservatives an awful lot.
And mind you, they didn’t run a correction. They simply changed the story later.
Now, another issue happened recently where the media embarrassed itself over a conservative woman. This time it was Sarah Palin. Sarah exhorted a crowd of Tea Partiers not to celebrate this election too soon by saying “Don’t party like it’s 1773 yet.”
Markos Moulitsas and PBS’s Gwen Ifill immediately tweeted disparaging remarks about Palin thinking she’d been confused about her dates but it turned out they were only highlighting their own ignorance. Palin, of course, was referencing the Boston Tea Party which makes sense as she was speaking in front of a bunch of Tea Partiers. Duh!
As we know the media dislikes right wing women and they push the meme as often as they can that they’re stupid. This week the media embarrassed themselves. But unfortunately this won’t stop them. I’m sure they’re going to embarrass themselves a lot more the next few years.
