For the second day in a row, the ConWeb lies and misleads about Barack Obama’s 2001 comments to a public radio station.
The Media Research Center’s Brent Baker claimed that “Barack Obama regretted that ‘the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and sort of more basic issues of political and economic justice in this society.'” CNSNews.com similarly asserted that Obama “lamented in a 2001 radio interview that the civil rights movement had failed to cause ‘redistributive change.'” The claim that Obama “regretted” or “lamented” those things are pure inventions on Baker’s and CNS’ part (who, in turn, are just regurgitating Matt Drudge); rather, Obama merely factually stated that those things did not take place.
At NewsBusters, Lyndsi Thomas complained that NPR didn’t report that “John McCain specifically addressed the recently surfaced audio and even quoted Obama as saying, ‘One of the tragedies of the Civil Rights movement was because the Civil Rights movement became so court-focused I think that there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of power through which you bring about redistributive change.'” But Thomas failed to report that McCain falsely described the statement as meaning that “one of the quote — ‘tragedies’ of the civil rights movement is that it didn’t bring about a redistribution of wealth in our society.” Scott Whitlock echoed Baker’s lie that “Obama lamented to a radio interviewer that ‘the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth.'” And P.J. Gladnick misleadingly claimed that Obama “called for legislative means to redistribute the wealth.”
At WorldNetDaily, the poll question of the day is: “What’s your reaction to Obama saying the Constitution is defective?” Of course, Obama said no such thing. Given that lie, it’s no surprise that the leading response by far is, “Obama is defective, not the Constitution.”