The Media Research Center loves to complain about the media taking people out of context — at least when it’s not taking people out of context itself. Now, the MRC is complaining that the media won’t take President Obama out of context.
Tom Blumer writes in a Nov. 16 NewsBusters item:
The obvious pull quote of the day from President Obama’s contentious press conference in Antalya, Turkey is this statement: “What I’m not interested in doing is posing or pursuing some notion of American leadership or America winning or whatever other slogans they come up with …” Obama then claimed that any ideas coming from those who believe in such a notion have “no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people and to protect the people in the region.”
Ed Driscoll at PJ Media believes that these words are “the president’s equivalent of Carter’s malaise speech” in the 1970s. Just in case he’s right, related stories at the Associated Press and the New York Times have not mentioned Obama’s statement, a clear indicator of his lack of genuine resolve, in their coverage.
Actually, if you put Obama’s comment in its full context of his entire answer to the question he was asked — something Blumer clearly has no interest in doing — the president’s reference to “some notion of American leadership or America winning” was clearly intended as a reference to an empty gesture done solely for posturing and which would not advance America’s interest in the fight against terrorism, since he goes on to state (after Blumer cut it off) that such a posturing gesture “has no relationship to what is actually going to work to protect the American people” and that he to pursue what actually works.
But Blumer doesn’t want to tell you about that, since it undermines the petty partisan sniping of his post.