Posted on 02/16/2005 12:51:29 PM PST by fight_truth_decay
MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, who last October spent an entire segment distorting Vice President Cheney's remarks about Iraq and al-Qaeda, on Tuesday night dedicated a segment, punctuated with a mock "Faux News Channel" logo which matched the appearance of the real Fox News Channel graphic, to how FNC's Brit Hume supposedly took former President Franklin Roosevelt "out of context" and "twisted" FDR's words when he quoted him, as have others, as having advocated private investment in Social Security accounts. Olbermann brought aboard James Roosevelt Jr., FDR's grandson, who denounced Hume, unconvincingly, for committing "quite an amazing distortion." Roosevelt saw a hanging offense, claiming Hume's brief item "calls for a retraction, an apology, maybe even a resignation."
The allegedly offending report aired during the February 3 "Grapevine" segment on FNC's Special Report with Brit Hume:
"Senate Democrats gathered at the Franklin Roosevelt Memorial today to invoke the image of FDR in calling on President Bush to remove private accounts from his Social Security proposal. But it turns out that FDR himself planned to include private investment accounts in the Social Security program when he proposed it. In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, 'Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age,' adding that government funding, quote, 'ought ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."
Nearly two weeks later, that set off Olbermann. He teased his February 15 Countdown program: "Privatizing parts of Social Security: Conservatives say President Roosevelt's speeches indicated he would have approved. President Roosevelt's grandson says that's taking his quotes way out of context. He'll join us."
Later, the MRC's Brad Wilmouth noticed, he plugged the upcoming segment: "Taken out of context and twisted for political gain: At least three conservative pundits, to say nothing of politicians, using part of an old speech to argue that President Roosevelt would have supported President Bush's reform of Social Security. FDR's grandson, a former associate commissioner for Social Security, begs to differ. He'll join us on Countdown."
Just past 8:30pm EST, Olbermann got to his #3 segment. Next to a graphic of FDR, the heading "Revisionist History" and "Faux News Channel" in a graphic which matched the real FNC logo, Olbermann intoned:
"President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, father of the New Deal and, at minimum, midwife to the Social Security system, would have endorsed President Bush's plan to partially privatize it. Our third story in the Countdown, that is the claim anyway of at least three conservative commentators and several Republican Congressmen, but it turns out those guys pretty much just made it up. In a moment, FDR's grandson, himself a former associate commissioner for Social Security, joins us to discuss the fraud.
"First, the background. [video of Hume on FNC] It began on television with Brit Hume of Fox News taking quotes from the 'three principles of security for our old people' that FDR expressed to Congress on January 17, 1935 -- not all the quotes, mind you, just some of them, and out of context. I'm reading from the transcript on the Fox Web site [text on screen] of Mr. Hume's newscast of February 3. 'It turns out,' Hume said, 'that FDR himself planned to include private investment accounts in the Social Security program when he proposed it. In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," unquote, adding that government funding, quote, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."'
"As promised I'm now joined by James Roosevelt Jr.... The argument is that Mr. Hume more or less twisted this entirely around. Can you explain it in layman's terms?"
James Roosevelt Jr., via satellite: "I think I can, and it's really quite an amazing distortion. What they did was they took a very simple statement that my grandfather made, which said that Social Security, when it was enacted almost 70 years ago, ought to, first of all, have a part that took care of people who didn't have time to build up a Social Security account, and the government should fund that out of general revenues. Secondly, Social Security should have a self-sustaining portion that was funded by contributions from both employers and employees. That's what we know and have known for 70 successful years as Social Security. And thirdly, those who wanted and who needed to, as many, almost everybody did, to have a higher income in retirement should have accounts where they could pay in voluntarily in addition to the guaranteed Social Security benefit. And then my grandfather said that eventually the self-sustaining portion of the guaranteed insurance would phase out the government-paid portion. That's because we'd have a fully functioning Social Security system as we do today. What Brit Hume and others have done is take portions of that paragraph and rearrange it so that it says something entirely different from what he intended."
Olbermann: "At the risk of doing a little too much reading, just to put it on the historical record, let me read the entire quote from which those quotes were pulled, the ones Mr. Hume pulled, only that he wanted to pull. [text on screen] 'In the important field of security for our old people, it seems necessary to adopt three principles: First, noncontributory old age pensions for those who are now too old to build up their own insurance. It is, of course, clear that for perhaps 30 years to come funds will have to be provided by the States and the Federal Government to meet these pensions. Second, compulsory contributory annuities which in time will establish a self-supporting system for those now young and for future generations. Third, voluntary contributory annuities by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age.' That's one of the Hume quotes there. 'It is proposed that the Federal Government assume one-half of the cost of the old age pension plan, which ought ultimately to be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans.' So where he raised the prospect of self-supporting annuity plans, that was not to replace Social Security, it was to replace the money the government was contributing to Social Security for the people who were born, say, in 1870 and earlier. Is that about it?"
Roosevelt: "That is exactly it, and he rearranged those sentences in an outrageous distortion, one that really calls for a retraction, an apology, maybe even a resignation."
Olbermann: "He may have been the only news reporter who did that. The other people who have made the comments on it were people like William Bennett, also in one of those live circus programs they have over on Fox, and John Fund from the Wall Street Journal online political commentary Web site. Of course, the President referenced this vaguely in the State of the Union. What do you make, generally speaking, of what we might fairly call revisionist history."
Roosevelt: "It's really quite amazing that all of the folks supporting privatization from the President on down keep invoking the name of my grandfather, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. I think it's, in a way, it's flattering to him. It's a testimony to how successful the program that he put in place has been and continues to be, and there's, on the screen you just saw my Dad standing next to my grandfather many years ago."
Olbermann: "But you are convinced from all that you know and that if anyone actually, literally took all of the words of your grandfather and went through them with a fine tooth comb, they'd never find anything that suggested there was in his mind ultimate privatization in whole or in part of Social Security."
Roosevelt: "I'm definitely convinced of that, and I'm convinced he never intended to phase it out. That, indeed, is why some of the greatest supporters of Social Security initially said it ought to be paid for out of general tax revenues. And Secretary of the Treasury Morgan Faw, who headed the commission my father appointed, said no, it has to have a payroll tax that's dedicated to Social Security because if it doesn't, it'll either get to look like welfare or it will be traded off against other good things. And the dedicated Social Security tax has been very successful over the years in raising almost all of our elderly citizens out of poverty where half of them were in poverty before Social Security."
Hume didn't claim that FDR would back Bush's plan, just that "FDR himself planned to include private investment accounts in the Social Security program when he proposed it." And the quotes supplied, both Hume's abbreviated version and the full rendition read by Olbermann, support that interpretation.
Last October, however, Olbermann very clearly distorted the words of Vice President Dick Cheney. The October 7 CyberAlert recounted:
MSNBC's Chris Matthews refused to concede that he had distorted Dick Cheney's comments about a 9/11 link to Iraq and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann set out to prove that Cheney had drawn such a connection, but Olbermann selectively edited a series of Cheney remarks, leaving out Cheney's specific rejection of any such connection. In one Meet the Press interview excerpted by Olbermann, it was Tim Russert, not Cheney, who raised the question of a Saddam Hussein/al-Qaeda link. Cheney, in parts of his answer Olbermann didn't share with his viewers, declared that "with respect to the connections to al-Qaeda, we haven't been able to pin down any connection there," and he labeled as an "allegation" the report that hijacker Mohamed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence.
For more about that and three other quotes Olbermann selectively edited, go to: http://www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2004/cyb20041007.asp#2
As Social Security’s critics know, the government program is robed in myths, for example, that it is “insurance” financed with a “trust fund,” paying “guaranteed” benefits “as a matter of earned right.” These myths have given most Americans a mistaken understanding of Social Security.
"The falseness of these beliefs is proved by Section 1104 of the original Social Security Act, never repealed: “The right to alter, amend, or repeal any provision of this Act is hereby reserved to the Congress.” This routine reservation of power to amend legislation means Congress can cut benefits. And it has, several times, beginning with the removal of Social Security’s money-back guarantee in 1939. This necessarily demolishes the “earned right,” and with it any analogy to insurance, with its binding contractual obligations. For obvious reasons, this particular provision of Social Security, and its implications, were never publicized by Social Security’s partisans."
"This false consciousness quickly attained a powerful grip on the American mind. In 1950 the self-employed were brought under Social Security. Beneficiaries who had previously started small businesses in retirement found that their new efforts were now covered employment; monthly self-employment earnings above $50, then $75, would trigger loss of benefits under the “retirement earnings test.” Many self-employed elderly were outraged: had they not been told that their benefits came as a right?3 Similarly, the famous Flemming v. Nestor Supreme Court ruling (1960) arose because Ephram Nestor, deported for being a communist in the 1930s, lost his benefits under the 1954 Social Security Amendments, which suspended benefits for those deported for subversive activity. Invoking statements by politicians that benefits are paid as an earned right, Nestor’s unsuccessful suit is further evidence of the public’s absorption of Social Security’s myths." Source: Social Security: Mythmaking and Policymaking Published in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty - December 2003, by John Attarian
If a fart could take on human form it would be Olberman
I picture him in tights under the banner of "Captain Irrelevant."
Olberman... the Dennis Kucinich of the MSM.
Keith Olbermann:
If we distilled him and extracted his DNA we would find that he had a double portion of "Arrogant Dumbass Prime" and a repeating strand of "Dont have a damn clue".
Hey, let's not insult farts!
Brit will run this today in the grapvine. HE WON'T BACK DOWN TO THIS PUTZ!
Funny, Olberman didn't ask Jr. whether his Grampa would have wanted to see the Trust Fund robbed by the Congress to pay for Pork Barrel projects...
The grandson of my grandfather says "Who gives a rat's *ss what FDR's grandson thinks?" Actually, come to think of it, who gives a rat's behind what FDR himself would have thought of it. Olberman is a full-on commie.
Good point.
Olberman's getting way too big for his britches for a former sports reporter...what that Groucho lookalike understands about world affairs could fit inside a jock strap.
Olbermann has a fan club at DU. That would seem to be his only audience, though.
FDR's Grandson? And that means what?
Olberman? Who's that?
Boy the fascist have decide it's time to silence anyone and everyone that disagrees with their propaganda.
All you have to do is look at ratings. Olbermann has the lowest ratings.
Cable ratings for 2/8/05
FNC: Cavuto: 736,000 / Gibson: 1,097,000 / Hume: 1,575,000 / Shep: 1,442,000 / O'Reilly: 2,253,000 / H&C: 1,734,000 / Greta: 1,550,000
CNN: Blitzer: 522,000 / Dobbs: 423,000 / Cooper: 518,000 / Zahn: 389,000 / King: 1,135,000 / NewsNight: 545,000
MSNBC: Abrams: 224,000 / Matthews: 274,000 / Olbermann: 223,000 / MSNBC Reports: 257,000 / Scarborough: 285,000
I am sure not all the 225 or so people who actually watched that episode agree with that dork.
when a "professional news guy".....haha....has to devote entire segments on FOX and O'Reilly which he has done lately shows an immaturity and jealousy that is pretty funny to watch......he is like yelling, "mommy mommy, Billy hit me again......WWAAAAAAAAAAAA". There there little Olbereyebrows, we won't take your no ratings toy network away from you.....Learned along time ago that you don't get clients or viewers in this case by bashing the competition, that is sooooooo childish.......
Though basically I agree, I'm thinking of more substantive analogy.
He wants Hume axed? What, did Hume forge documents or something?
How many years did Dan Rather defraud the American public and no one in the media called for his head? Now some nut doesn't like Hume because he's a conservative, and so he calls for his firing.
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