Glenn Beck’s glassy-eyed followers are irredeemably mesmerized by him and would sooner hack off a limb then concede that he was less than honest about anything. They wail plaintively that he is unwaveringly truthful and that no one has ever proven that he has lied. For the record, I have proven it many times.
On today’s program Beck was generous enough to provide another example of his compulsive dishonesty. And it was packaged in a familiar form for Beck: the old out-of-context video clip gambit. On this occasion Beck presented this segment of President Obama discussing health care:
Obama: [W]e said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your — if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.
After playing the clip, Beck went into outrage overdrive, complaining first about the sentence fragment “…consistent in saying to people…” implying that Obama was only “saying” these things and that he didn’t mean them. Only an idiot would interpret these extemporaneous remarks in context that way. And that, of course, is Beck’s built-in excuse.
But the larger corruption of the truth was Beck’s reaction to the news that some provisions were “snuck” into the bill that violated the pledge that no one would get between you and your doctor. Beck was aghast that the President would tolerate such legislative misbehavior. He castigated the President for not immediately putting a halt to Congress’s covert attempt to countermand his promise and tarnish his honor. Beck went on to declare that if the President had spoken up about this, that he (Beck) would heartily approve:
Beck: Well let me tell you something. Not only would that be the right thing for any president to do, his approval ratings would go through the roof. People would actually say “Well OK now, wait a minute. If he’s gonna do that I might actually listen to him.”
Apparently Beck wasn’t listening because Obama did precisely what Beck was accusing him of not doing. Obama expressly stated that he had caught the errant provisions and set about eliminating them. And this information was in the very segment that Beck had just played on the air. Except that Beck cut out the parts where Obama talked about scrubbing the problem provisions. Here’s the quote again in full. Note that the bold section in the middle is the only part that Beck played:
Obama: If you look at the package that we’ve presented — and there’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating. For example…
…we said from the start that it was going to be important for us to be consistent in saying to people if you can have your — if you want to keep the health insurance you got, you can keep it, that you’re not going to have anybody getting in between you and your doctor in your decision making. And I think that some of the provisions that got snuck in might have violated that pledge.
And so we are in the process of scrubbing them and making sure that it’s tight.
The complete clip shows unequivocally that Obama is keeping his pledge regarding the doctor/patient relationship. In fact, he was merely giving an example of incidents where institutional kinks can waylay legislation and demonstrating that he wasn’t falling for it. But Beck’s audience won’t know that because Beck unscrupulously edited it out. Then he portrayed the President as negligent for not doing something that in reality he did. And he even went so far as to admit that the American people would reward the President for doing the things that Beck left on the cutting room floor. And, of course, that’s reason Beck did it.
Beck certainly knew the content of the whole speech. So it is inescapable that he deliberately misrepresented it to advance his deceit. He purposefully truncated it to prevent his audience from seeing anything about Obama that they might regard as positive. And in the process he hammered Obama for not doing what he actually did do.
It’s too bad that most of Beck’s disciples will never hear about this fraud. Although many are so thoroughly bewitched that they might not even grasp it if they did hear about it. But it is important to continue to document it. Open minded people who haven’t formed opinions about Beck need to have this kind of information to keep from being duped by him.
I note that the phrase “provisions got snuck in” is a classic passive construction. which means Obama needn’t – and apparently didn’t – give what ought to be a direct object “provisions” a subject – ie, WHO snuck them in. was it the congressional Republicans? if so, Obama could really hammer his point by elucidating how conservatives have been not merely obstructing legislation but contaminating it in the meantime. of course Beck would leave that part “on the cutting room floor” but the rest of the country would have a better idea of just who the bad guys are.
Daphne makes an interesting point. Obama really could hammer the Republicans if they were the ones that had snuck these provisions into the health care bill. The problem is, the Republicans have been shut out of the process. The legislation in both houses was drafted by Democrats. I don’t recall any Republican amendments being passed/approved. Just how did those wascally Wepubwicans sneak those provisions in?
It also seems that we agree, as does the President, that there are provisions in the legislation which would violate his pledge to allow people to keep their existing insurance and their existing doctors. People on the right have been saying that for months while people on the left, the authors of the legislation, called them liars.
You can’t have it both ways. The people who said these provisions were in there all along were called liars. It has now been admitted that they were telling the truth, the provisions were, in fact, in the bill. Those same people are now still called liars because they they point out that the authors who put the provisions in question into the bill say they never intended to and therefore have not violate any pledges.
The Democrats had every intention of passing this bill and the President had every intention of signing it WITH these pledge violating provisions “hidden” in the legislation.
You’re jumping to conclusions. I think the statement by Obama proves that he was NOT going to sign a bill that didn’t meet his criteria. He used the word “eliminate” with regard to those provisions. That’s pretty definitive.
So the people making those claims about the bill were still lying. Also note that Obama said the suspect provisions “might” violate the pledge. So he may have been approaching this with an abundance of caution. That’s a good thing. And if the suspect provisions were the work of Republicans, then they can’t take credit for complaining about them.
Finally, it is patently false that the Republicans were not included in the drafting. Have you forgotten the months that the gang of six (3 Dems, 3 Repubs) were putting the legislation together? The lie that they were shut out is one of the most egregious and frustrating.
Mark,
People said these provisions were in there. The provisions were in there. The fact that the President says that now they will be eliminated in no way negates the fact that they were in there and that the people who said the were are not liars. It’s very simple.
The Gang of 6 was in the Senate and wasn’t the result of that that 5 of the 6 walked out and left Ben Nelson (D) to introduce the legislation himself?
Cite for me the Conservative principal that supports bigger government to include inserting the government into the doctor-patient relationship? (Unless you allege that Progressive Republicans added it and then I may concede the point if you can find fingerprints.)
Explain to me the weeks of video shot of the closed door of Harry Reids office behind which only Democrats were working on the HCR bill.
Do you honestly expect people to believe that the President just stumbled on these provisions and that he would not sign a bill with them in there? Apparently he jsut stumbled on the recently, well after the Dems had expected HCR to be passed. Obama and the Democrats have given up on just about everything, single payer, etc., in order to get something passed that they could call “historic” HCR. Would provisions requiring people to go to certain doctors really prevent passage and signing? I think it would be one of those “Dang! How’d that get in there? Oh well, we’ll pass/sign it and go back and fix it later.” deals and then they’d never go back and fix it.
There have been other items eliminated from legislation in the past year that simply reappeared reworded in other sections of the bill.
Lastly, Republicans can all stay home and still not obstruct any Democrat legislative proposal in either body (at least until Scott Brown is seated). The D’s have the numbers to pass anything and everything.
Well, you’re still misrepresenting the process and I’m not gonna go back and forth with you on it.
However, I do think it’s funny that you so thoroughly fell for the Fox News line about “closed doors.” Dems are allowed to hold caucus meetings to plan legislative activity. The Repubs did the very same thing. It’s just that Fox didn’t show Mitch McConnell’s closed door. The actual hearings were open to everyone and broadcast on C-SPAN. You obviously watch to much Beck and Cavuto.
And the fact that Dems don’t march in lock-step like Repubs, while frustrating to some of us, is a feature of democracy.
Agreed on not going back and forth.
On the Too much Fox News front though and the locked doors, I’ll just offer these:
From the last bastion of conservative media, MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34692080
You are right about one thing, there is no coverage of the Dems excluding the Republicans from the HCR negotiations in the mainstream media. Maybe that’s why they’re losing viewers/readers in double-digit percentages and FNC is gaining in double-digit percentages.
If lack of MSM coverage made something not true, I would concluded that: homelessness ended with the election of President Obama; the Climategate scandal is not continuing to reveal new evidence of fraud and deception on the global warming hoax; few, if any, soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan since 1/21/2009 (except the ones that died for the Obama photo-op at Dover AFB; employment is not 17%; etc.
Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away, it just makes it more of a shocking surprise when it hits you in the face and you haven’t had time to prepare.
Cheers, Mark. Thanks for being civil in debate. 🙂
John
Your welcome. It’s hard sometimes, but I try to keep things here focused on substance.
Speaking of which, you’ve commented on virtually every topic but the one this article is really about. Do you have any problem at all with the way Beck edited out the beginning and ending of Obama’s remarks, and then complained that Obama didn’t say the things that were in the parts he cut?
I hate when that happens. 😉
I don’t think that the sentence prior of after the portion that Beck quoted forces modification of Becks point. Actually, if I were Beck I’d use the opening sentence as yet another club. Obama says “and there’s some stray cats and dogs that got in there that we were eliminating, we were in the process of eliminating.”
“Were”. He says we “were” in the process of eliminating these things that just magically appeared. Not that we “are” in the process of eliminating. I know that’s a fine hair to split but, Obama is so scripted and chooses words so carefully…How can I not look at that and conclude that they are likely not going to do anything about it – modify the language and move it in the bill so that it has the same end result?
Don’t jsut read the quote, listen to him say it. The hesitation, the searching for the right words, which I believe is, as Beck calls it, a “self editing” process. Obama is trying to say something without directly saying it, without revealing something.
There was another incident like this before, where Obama talked around something and slipped up. I wish I could recall it because it really would help to establish this pattern of his. The reason he uses the teleprompter so much is because when he is off the prompter, as he was in this quote from 1/29, he slips-up and says stuff he shouldn’t, revealing glimpses of the truth behind the “message”. (I’m not sure I’m explaining my point well without going on for paragraphs to do it.)
So, the short answer is, no, the additional context only bolsters Becks point and hurts Obamas contention that these provisions were just “typos” or something.
I was actually stopping back in to post Beck going through some of Obamas other “pledges”. Obamas “promises kept” track record isn’t something that convinces me he deserves the benefit of the doubt on this one item we have been discussing. As we have both said, context is important and one must also look at the overall context of Obamas character and behavior.
This is the 10 minute section of the show from last night in which Beck goes through the promises kept. (The subject we’ve been discussing is in part 1 if you want to watch the whole segment. Part I also contains a very interesting compare and contrast between the Statue of Liberty and the Colossus of Rome.)
http://www.youtube.com/user/therightscoop#p/u/7/f7f23I-rpq4
Enjoy!
Btw, I recall reading (because, yes, I did research many of the allegations made against the HCR bill by reading/searching the bill) that the sections allowing people to keep their existing insurance also contained verbiage that prevented any changes to those existing plans. The net result was that if an insurance plan, or an employers insurance offering changed in anyway, coverage, premium costs, etc that the plan, that it became null, void and obsolete and that the individual or employer had to then offer one of the available government or co-op plans.
This was the language cited by Beck, Palin and others when they said the Bill doesn’t allow you to keep your doctor/coverage. Effectively, the plan did allow you to keep exactly what you had at the time the law went into effect, but, after that, if you changed jobs, had a life changing event, the price went up (which they all do), the only choices were the government sanctioned plans.
I think you’re right – about splitting hairs. Obama DID say “we are” in the closing sentence that was cut. And remember, these were extemporaneous remarks. You cannot expect that they will grammatically perfect.
If you don’t think that the editing was deceptive, then you and I have very different ways of reading.
As for the clip of Beck, do you really think that Beck’s analysis of the promises Obama kept is fair? Here is a more impartial analysis.
And Beck’s discussion of the Statue of Liberty was mind-bogglingly stupid. It reminded me of his hysterically paranoid rant on the architecture of Manhattan.
“Extemporaneous remarks” is the best excuse you can make? I thought Obama was the smartest president we ever had (not that you’ve said that but it certainly is how he has been sold to us by the MSM and media.)
I gotta ask, not knowing any of your history, is that what you said about GW Bush when he was being called the dumbest most illiterate President in history for saying things like “strategery”?
You want out of context, deceptive misquoting, do you recall Newt Gingrichs “wither on the vine” comment regarding medicare? Holy cow talk about deceptive and intentional misconstruing and creative editing. “wither on the vine” was in the last sentence of about 4 paragraphs in which Gingrich had outlined several health care options that, in his opinion, people would choose over medicare if given the opportunity. (not forced off medicare or forced onto a specific gov’t approved plan but allowed to choose the plan they wanted.) After “wither on the vine” came the words “because people would opt out of it.” (or similar. I’m close.) Gingrichs statement was portrayed as a desire on his part to defund and end medicare and leave seniors w/o healthcare. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Did you see Beck boil the frog? Remember how the protestors of that bit ended the youtube videos just before he said “The frog was plastic, by the way.” That is egregious.
I stand by my analysis, the edited out segments do NOT alter the content of the portion of the statement that Beck aired. The fact of the matter still is that the provisions that were contrary to his pledge were in the bill. The bill that would have passed and been signed but thankfully wasn’t.
Here is what Obama said, “Mom, I did everything you asked me to do today, as promised. But there are some things that I did today that I’m in the process of undoing. For example, [I think it is very important that I remain consistent in telling you that I kept my promise not to eat any cookies before dinner. But, some cookies got snuck out of the cookie jar.] And I’m in the process of putting those cookies back in the jar now.” So you see, the kid didn’t actually break his pledge to his mother because he didn’t actually eat the cookie. Does anything in quotes but outside the [] alter the meaning of anything in the statement?
I’ll tell ya, if that’s my kid he’s in trouble regardless of how consistent he was in telling me he wasn’t going to eat any cookies.
Obviously we’re not going to agree on this so, I guess we’ll just agree to disagree.
You did hear the funny, non-extemporaneous goof our little genius made today right? Reading the teleprompter (which he is incredible at, I’ll give you that.) Obama referred three times to a Navy “corpsman” which, all three times, he pronounced “corpse man” rather than the correct “coreman”. Were that mistake made by George Bush, can you imagine how Bush could not escape ridicule which would last for weeks?
I thought of you and “News Corpse – The Anatomy of a Decaying Media” when I heard that today. You’ll likely have to youtube or go to Fox News to see it because it’s not gonna get a lot of play on the decaying MSM MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS outlets. It’s not “news” when a brilliant Democrat President says something stupid like that. The decaying media must be fertilizing Fox News because FNC is growing by double-digit percentages. I think they were fertilizing FNC even before they started decaying, by the BS they’ve been spewing for decades.
Unbelievable… Beck obviously wants to make his audience think that he is looking out for them (channeling Bill O’Reilly) by taking quotes completely out of context and portraying Obama as something terrible and himself as some pinnacle of a truth-teller, which is obviously ridiculous.
I always wonder how any anchor/pundit/commentator can do selective editing like this, but it is even more puzzling how the producers/researchers of the program allow such deception. You would think somebody in that staff of his, considering he has one, would think “Isn’t it wrong to take a quote completely out of context like that to make a point?” I guess this just further proves Glenn, and the people he hires, don’t have a heart… they are all cold as ice and only care about holding up the status quo of hate and lies.