Political Irony

When the Wall Street Journal was bought by Murdock’s News Corp, people were worried that it would be turned into another Faux News. Well, you don’t have to worry any longer, it has been. With the publishing of the recent editorial by Karl “Bush’s brain” Rove, the WSJ has become just another arm of the Murdock propaganda machine.

The editorial is a blatant attempt to rewrite the history of the Obama presidency. For example, Rove says:

As for the killing of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama did what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation. Even President Bill Clinton says in the film “that’s the call I would have made.” For this to be portrayed as the epic achievement of the first term tells you how bare the White House cupboards are.

There’s just one problem. While Clinton did indeed say the words quoted by Rove, here’s what Clinton really said:

He took the harder and the more honorable path. When I saw what had happened, I thought to myself, “I hope that’s the call I would have made.”

In other words, the complete opposite of what Rove claims Clinton meant.

Now it gets interesting. When the Washington Post objected to Rove’s obvious bad quote, WSJ edited Rove’s piece to read as follows:

As for the killing of Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama did what virtually any commander in chief would have done in the same situation. Even President Bill Clinton says in the film “I hope that’s the call I would have made.” For this to be portrayed as the epic achievement of the first term tells you how bare the White House cupboards are.

And at the end of the article they placed a disclaimer “An earlier version of this column included an incomplete quote from Bill Clinton in the last paragraph.” Now that the WSJ is fully aware of the bad quote, they do a half-assed job of fixing it. It is still misleading, since Clinton was obviously praising Obama, while Rove is claiming that Clinton said it was no big deal. And worse, the paragraph now doesn’t make any sense. Does the WSJ really think their readers are that stupid?

But the best part is an article in Forbes, which does the same thing to Rove that Rove did to Obama and Clinton, with the headline “Karl Rove Endorses Obama in WSJ Op-Ed”. They quote Rove as saying:

Mr. Obama deserves re-election for restoring America to prosperity after a recession.

and

Mr. Obama ended the Iraq War and… Osama bin Laden was killed on his watch.

Of course, what Rove really said was this:

Viewers are told Mr. Obama deserves re-election for restoring America to prosperity after a recession “as deep as anything . . . since the Great Depression.” He accomplished this in part, so the film says, by bailing out the auto companies—deciding not to just “give the car companies” or “the UAW the money” but to force them to “work together” and “modernize the automobile industry.” The president, we’re told, also confronted “one of the most worrisome problems facing America . . . the cost of health care.”

Abroad, Mr. Obama ended the Iraq war and, in the “ultimate test of leadership,” Osama bin Laden was killed on his watch.

See how that works?

But why stop there? The article points out that Rove has been endorsing Obama for a while now, supporting this with some really great out-of-context quotes:

Rove praised Obama’s work ethic, saying “He is working a lot harder than he thought he would.”

Mr. Obama set up a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010 to make sure people are treated fairly.

[H]is Republican opposition puts party ahead of country.

I’ll let you read the Forbes article to see what Rove really said. Shame on the WSJ for publishing tripe like this.