Topic: NewsBusters
In a July 30 NewsBusters post, Warner Todd Huston asserted that "Jonathan Weisman is reporting on his "The Trail" blog that presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama told House Democrats that he believes himself to be the symbol of all that is good in America. It appears that he is beginning to believe the over-the-top hype that he really is the Obamessiah for America." Huston goes on to rant: "Wow, the arrogance in that. The hubris, the astounding hubris of it all is overwhelming to anyone that knows even a tiny bit of human history. ... Why Obama gets a pass for this sort of messianic rhetoric is amazing to me."
But Huston didn't note the rest of Weisman's post, which puts the quote in its proper context:
But one leadership aide said the full quote put it into a different context. According to that aide, Obama said, "It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign -- that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol."
Why did Huston refuse to tell his readers about the full context of Obama's statement? Was he just in the mood to rant -- he is prone to those, after all -- and needed a out-of-context claim to set him off?
This, combined with Tim Graham's repeating of another apparently false claim that Obama himself released his prayer at the Western Wall -- which Graham has yet to update or correct as of this writing other than to add "Report:" to the beginning of the headline to make it slightly less declarative of a false claim -- tells us that NewsBusters and the rest of the MRC are descending quickly into Obama Derangement Syndrome territory. The truth, it seems, no longer matters to them.
