Lazy, Lazy, Lazy, Tsk, Tsk, Tsk

I don't normally do this because if I did, this blog would be nothing more than a factchecking site (which, believe me I've contemplated. Not so long ago I compiled a list of conservative and liberal misquotes. Then it expanded into sports. Then I realized the time and energy needed to properly research and make sure you didn't make the same errors journalists and punits were making was waaaayyyy too much. Maybe if I had a team of true independent minds, but for now...)

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Still. I did find l'affaire Bachmann interesting. One because it's recent, and two, because after all the talk about rhetoric in the aftermath of Tucson there goes the monkey our of the cracked box.

So. After watching Chris Matthews, in all his civil and intellectual glory, seize the reigns of American history (because you know no one will. You go Chris!), I decided to actually watch Michelle Bachmann's speech and the now infamous alleged comment about John Qunicy Adams, the Forefathers and slavery.

I know. Doing things for yourself is hard.

Perspective and context I try to keep. Sometimes, I get a little help from my blogging friends but overall, that's the theme of this blog.

Whenever I read liberals complain about conservatives, it's usually about taking things out of context.

Fair enough.

However, I constantly see both sides doing it.

And so I believe it's the case here with Bachmann.

The claim is she said the Founding Fathers, including John Quincy Adams, fought tirelessly to eradicate slavery.

What she in fact seems to have meant was, the men who documented America's history knew slavery was wrong and that "our forebears" worked tirelessly to eradicate it including John Quincy Adams - which of course, he did. Even to the point of losing his friendship to the pro-slavery propopent John Calhoun. But he couldn't pass his policies through Congress. The stage was set for Lincoln.

The key and operative word here is 'forebears.' Actually there were two key words that link the overall context of the message. Can anyone guess them? Forebears and...Mayflower.

What makes it cloudy is she did say, "what the founders wrote in those documents." Which documents exactly? The "pre-Constitutional" documents? She seemed to be mixing things up a little. She jumped around but is it in the manner being depicted in the media? What do you think?

Now, I guess this is where someone can take it to mean Founding Fathers and run with it and then lead to a Chris Matthews "bubble head" tirade (civility again anyone?). However, she alluded to the Mayflower just a minute before and it's more likely she meant forebears in an ancestral context.

But I do expect a lot more from the New York Times:

"Last week, Bachmann was in Iowa, setting off alarm bells about her possible presidential ambitions and delivering a speech in which she claimed that the founding fathers had “worked tirelessly” to eradicate slavery. She then cited John Quincy Adams, who was not a founding father."


I guess what Bachmann is guilty of is oversimplifying the slave issue and implying that "all our forebears" fought to eradicate it because clearly they didn't. It's not an easy subject to insert in a speech. Where Bachmann failed to express her views in a manner that a layman could grasp, this journalist was just plain lazy in doing their job. She preyed on the layman's ignorance herself without much journalistic dignity. It's ok. She's not alone. That shit happens all the time. Man, sports journalists at ESPN are so lazy it makes me want to start my own sports network - with Ron Burgundy at the helm.

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I don't believe, despite all their shortcomings, American politicians are ignorant - or at least the way leftists are trying to depict it - of their history to the point of idiocy.

Now if a slighty misinterpretation as this is enough to set off the left, then dammit, I call out Obama for his 57 states comment.

Did that make him "ignorant?" Of course not, it probably was a slip up. So...why not give the same courtesy or benefit of the doubt here? I mean, the evidence seems to point that Matthews is every bit of an intellectual charlatan as Beck is. And someone should send Rachel Maddow a book on basic finance and economics. Just saying.

Now, where I did raise an eyebrow was around the 24:50 mark when she asserted "regardless of your color of your skin." It's true the original settlers from Europe were escaping aristocratic regimes and that America was founded on the principle of a "classless" society where everyone could move up the socio-scale, but I'm not so sure skin colour was part of that equation - or at least in the way she asserted it.