AP Sanitizes Sebelius Racism Accusations Against GOP

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air noted a revision to an existing Associated Press report carried in the Miami Herald yesterday. It concerned Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius's accusations that Republicans are engaging in racial "code word" campaigning.

The original version that Morrissey cached is here; the revision is here (for now; backup is at my web host here if it changes).

Among other adds, changes, and deletes, the revision deleted a racial reference in the original headline. It also removed a direct quote from Sebelius that "(Republicans) are not going to go lightly into the darkness."

Morrissey wasn't sure at the time he noted the revision whether the Herald or AP and writer Nigel Duara (with editorial help?) instigated the changes.

I can tell you that, as expected, it was AP, as the two Google News search pics taken during the noon hour Eastern Time show:

The first search, on the original headline ("Sebelius says GOP using racial 'code language'"), returns a word series only found in the first report. The second search, on the cleaned-up headline ("Sebelius: 'Code language' hindering Obama campaign") contains a unique excerpt from the second.

Because different versions of the report were and are being carried in a number of media outlets, AP is the obvious culprit.

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius accused Republicans on Tuesday of injecting race into the presidential campaign, arguing that they are using "code language" to convince Midwesterners that Democrat Barack Obama is different from them.

"Have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African-American?" Sebelius asked with sarcasm.

Sebelius was responding to a question from the audience at the Iowa City Public Library about the tenacity of Democrats and whether they would fight for victory as hard as Republicans in the closing weeks of the election.

Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said Tuesday that a belief among some voters that Democrat Barack Obama is different from them is hindering his campaign for president.

Asked at a brown-bag lunch at the local library why the campaign is neck-and-neck, Sebelius said "code language" raising doubts about Obama is invalid because his life experience "has a lot more to do with me and my family."

"I think that the notion that, 'By the way, have any of you noticed that Barack Obama is part African American?' I think that is for a number of people difficult," Sebelius said. "I think we need to talk about the fact that that is a real issue."

Also note how Duara's "injecting race into the presidential campaign" (which Sebelius was indeed doing) disappeared from the revision.

Why did this story get changed? Did someone ..... decide that it made the smear tactics just too obvious? Clearly, someone got second thoughts about including that quote from Sebelius ....

Sadly, the AP and traditional media sanitizers do things like this to their reports more frequently than the average reader knows. Here are just a few of many other examples:

* John Kerry's original "botched joke" (yeah, right) in October 2006 about the type of person who becomes a soldier and goes to Iraq (“You know, education, if you make the most of it, if you study hard and you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, uh, you, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq”) disappeared within hours.

* Barack Obama's Saturday, May 31 announcement that he was leaving Black Liberation Theology-laden Trinity United Church of Christ apparently didn't look too good to the AP's Tom Raum, who thought it necessary to add several irrelevant paragraphs about John McCain's virtually non-existent "woes with religious leaders."

* In August 2006, when British police thwarted a major terror plot to take down 6-10 overseas flights, Reuters reports wasted very little time adding foundationless references to the Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian situation.

* Perhaps most infamously, after the July 7, 2005 bus and tunnel bombings in London, the BBC removed the word “terrorist” from original reportage on the July London Subway bombings that contained the dreaded "T-word" (noted at the time here and here at Weapons of Mass Discussion).

As you can see, original reporting tends to be more truthful than that which follows. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Use this at the liberals whenever they charge racism

I am a conservative. I am a Republican.

Among other things, this means that—based on no evidence whatsoever—I have been called a racist exactly one million times.

* I have been called a racist as a collective slur of all Republicans, by hundreds of thousands of lefties from the media to academia to Hollywood, for the last half-century.

* I have been called a racist by Barack Obama.

* I have been called a racist in comment threads.

* I was recently called a racist in an email pursuant to this article—an article which had exactly jack.squat to do with race.

* I have been called a racist to my face. Never by a black person, but by more than one white liberal.

Well, I finally snapped back. You know I’ve snapped when I write in second person.

Do I feel bad about that? Not at all.

They’ve been making it personal—silencing all debate with a single word—for decades. To blazes with the rascals.

Print this out, and the next time it happens to you, either directly or indirectly, you tell ‘em this:

Oh stop it. Not one more word.

Stop trying to project your own racism upon us.

YOU, in fact, are the real racists.

Historically, your Party’s racism and atrocities are undeniable. Yours was the Party of Slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and opposition to every piece of civil rights legislation the GOP tried to pass. The KKK was the terrorist wing of the Democratic Party . . . .YOUR Party.

But even today, your racism continues. Oh sure, you smile and say how much you support blacks and how many wonderful, “articulate” blacks you admire, but beneath that lie is a contempt you show with your every action.

It is YOUR boot on the throat of every person whom you’ve made into a government dependent.

The black family, once the equal in cohesion to the white family, is now rent asunder. Welfare rules you created and touted as humane for 40 years have driven black men and black women apart. Most black children now grow up without a dad in the home. The blood of the black family is on YOUR hands.

It is YOUR abortion mills that are bringing about a slow genocide of blacks in America.

Those are YOUR abortion mills, which are carrying on the work of YOUR hero, Margaret Sanger . . . the feminist, eugenicist, and nazi darling . . . you know, the one who wanted to make sure the word didn’t get out about her plan to “exterminate the negro.”

It is YOUR people who say that the drop in crime in the 90s was brought about by the abortion of what YOU called would-be criminal black babies.

It is you who think so little of black people that you constantly tell them, in word and in deed, that they are not able to compete on a level playing field. It is you who seek to drive this message home every chance you get. It is you who uses this lie to keep them on a plantation of government dependence and electoral vassalage.

All we want blacks to do is build familes, get rich, and participate in the building of a civil society . . . .just like what we want for everyone else. And you call US the racists?

Oh, and let’s go back in time, shall we?

The Republican Party fought—and its people died—to end Slavery.

Then, we fought and died to end segregation, and to bring voting and other civil rights to all the freed slaves.

Died? Yes, died. We died because YOU created the KKK to kill Republicans and blacks, and to take away the gains we were trying to make.

And you did a damn good job of it, too. You drove us out of the South.

We fought for civil rights for 100 years. You opposed our every effort.

You opposed our attempts to end segregation. You filibustered our civil rights bills. You even fought against us when we proposed anti-lynching legislation.

Your officials turned firehoses on people marching for freedom. Your governors stood in the doorways of schools to prevent little black girls and boys from entering.

It was a REPUBLICAN president who had to send the National Guard—the National Guard!—just so that these children could go to school.

Civil Rights did not become possible because you started supporting it. Civil rights became possible because you stopped standing in the way of it.

More of our politicians supported Civil Rights legislation than yours did. Yours filibustered it! It finally made it through because of the tireless efforts of the Republican minority leader.

Oh what, now you want to tell me that it was only the SOUTHERN Democrats who were the racists? Okay fine. Half of your party were slaveholding, segregationist, KKK-creating, Jim Crow upholding opposers of civil rights.

Gee, only half? You must be very proud.

Guess what, NONE of my party ever was. We didn’t stop fighting for civil rights until civil rights legislation was finally passed.

You want to tell me that only half your party was bad? OK, fine. However, that half of your party controlled your attitudes towards race from the foundation of this nation through the 1960s. That half of your party WAS the problem. Without them, we would have done away with segregation and poll taxes and lynchings 140 years ago.

Oh, and let’s look at the South. When Democrats controlled the South, it was a bastion of segregation and racism. Now, Republicans control the South . . . and look! We didn’t bring back segregation or literacy tests for voting. It may not be perfect yet, but it’s not the segregated place you made it anymore.

You have the nerve to call me a racist? To call us racists? Why? Because I am a Republican? You have a hell of a lot of nerve. Or is it because I have white skin?

You’d better not be saying that, because that’s called blood guilt. That says that I’m guilty by nothing more than my biology. That idea was very popular in Germany in the 1930s, but I have to say, we don’t much appreciate it now.

Oh, and funny thing, that idea was also popular among YOUR ideological forebears for almost two centuries. It is interesting that you’re pushing a similar notion, here in 2008.

My ideological forebears fought and died to put an end to the injustices YOUR ideological forebears wrought. I am proud to follow in their tradition. I have NOTHING to be ashamed of.

For what your ideological forebears did . . . and for what you’re doing today . . . you might want to think about feeling a bit of shame yourself.

You are still capable of feeling shame, aren’t you?

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