Background: As all of you know, it’s not a true critical Obama speech without at least one howler of a historical error in it somewhere, and last Thursday’s was a beauty of one: did you know Lincoln founded the Republican party? Of course you didn’t know that: after all, you’re almost certainly better-versed in actual American history than the Harvard-educated n-dimensional genius who is currently President. And, no, this wasn’t the speechwriter’s fault this time: that Lincoln bit wasn’t in the original. Hence the kerfluffle: as The American Thinker noted, PBS used the original embargoed speech transcript, while the New York Times used the actual speech itself to generate its transcript. All of which is not really all that newsworthy… except that apparently people are trying to point this little detail out to PBS, and PBS is refusing to either change its transcript to reflect objective reality, or even publish the calls for correction.
Assuming this is true… oh, my. Screening comments. Tsk, tsk, tsk… what’s that? “You do that all the time, Moe?” Well, yes. Cheerfully, in fact. But that’s because I know how to do it properly. Direct-to-spam protocols for querulous whines, bitter profanity, and inchoate-rage-presented-as-dispassionate-truth-telling is one thing; but, really. I watched the speech. Here, you can watch the relevant part of the speech, too:
PBS mucked up. There’s actually nothing really wrong with providing a copy of an embargoed speech the moment it’s no longer embargoed; and a simple Update: the transcript has been corrected to reflect changes made to it in the delivery would have been a reasonable thing to do. All that they’re doing with this strategy is to take partial ownership of President Obama’s ignorant gaffe.
Via Instapundit.
Moe Lane