’08 Election Slime Report: Chapter 1

Update: I’ve seen this video now, at two different locations, and both versions had the word missing. At the Breitbart site there is a disclaimer, referring to it as a “glitch” and including a printed transcript. Of course, everyone will see the video, and no one will read the transcript.

If anyone is wondering how dirty the upcoming presidential campaign is going to be…

…during a speech last night Michelle Obama said “…for the first time in my adult life I am really proud of my country.” The video of this speech is apparently linked this morning at http://www.breitbart.tv.

OK so far, except the audio portion of the speech has been edited to take out the word “really,” making it seem as if she meant that as an adult she’s never been proud of this country. (It’s bad editing, too. You can actually see her say the word really, and they didn’t even get the whole word removed — I can hear the first part of the word, because somebody was a little slow on the fader and somebody else was too stupid to fix it before they released the recording. As the retired “Best Tape Editor In Los Angeles,” I find this insult-to-injury personally offensive.) In Wisconsin later in the evening, John McCain’s wife Cindy responded obliquely to Ms. Obama’s statement, pointing out that she is, in fact, proud of her country.

I am resisting the urge to laugh at theses jerks, whoever they are, because maybe it’s too fine a point to call this “slimy,” and probably no one will think it means anything except those who have already decided that Barack Obama is not their candidate, but come this Fall, when Fox News is routinely identifying him as “Barack Hussein Obama” and John McCain, in the death throes of his last chance to be President, is desperately slinging whatever mud he can scrape together, we will remember that this is how it started. The neocons have been on the rise for two generations, and in power almost continuously since 1980, and they will not go down easily, and their struggle to maintain position will not be pretty.

That said, I think Ms. Obama should realize that she is now in the glare of national politics and everything she does and says will be taken apart and analyzed and used against the Obama campaign. This is why the candidates need writers. She has access to some pretty good ones, judging from the speeches her husband has been making. She should use them.

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NOTE: My information on this sleazy video comes from The Thom Hartmann Show, on Air America, which I listen to every weekday morning. I’m at work as I write this, and my employer has blocked streaming media on the web, so I can’t see it for myself until I get home this evening, by which time I bet it’s been removed.