How desperate was Fox Nation for a new angle to attack President Obama? So desperate they pulled out his yearbook from Harvard Law School. Their great smoking gun? You may have to sit down to hear this… in 1991, he posted a quote calling for “mutual respect and tolerance.” Oh, the horror!
The quote being mocked goes as follows:
“After three years, I continue to be struck by the tremendous talent and energy among HLS students and faculty; The diversity of campus life challenges all of us to question our assumptions, listen to other viewpoints, and articulate our values in a spirit of mutual respect and tolerance.”
Such a horrible, horrible quote - who would have thought this from a man who once called for civility and mutual respect in the abortion debates, and once had a narrative about it with China’s Ju Hinato? Though to be fair, we should have caught it in all those ugly calls for bipartisanship… God, how obvious was it when he told pundits to leave Sarah Palin’s family alone when she was running as his opponent’s VP?
Of course, the point Fox is trying to make is that this proves Obama a hypocrite because of the “mean-spirited campaign discourse that some Republicans say has characterized” his current campaign. So who are those “some Republicans?” We don’t know but “some” are Romney operatives: “Republicans both inside and outside of GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney’s campaign have complained in recent weeks that the tone of Obama’s re-election effort has grown in coarseness and aggression,” Fox tells us, via an article from The Daily Caller.
So let’s see, “some Republicans” complain about what a meanie Obama is and instead of questioning whether the sources might be just a wee bit biased, Fox digs up a 20 year-old yearbook to suggest that Obama’s even worse than the Republican operatives say!
Well, maybe we should all take a lesson from the comments left by the civil, tolerant readers - wait, what?
Mittens and his GOP rivals had no problem with being “mean-spirited” or showing “coarseness or aggressiveness,” frequently making onlookers wonder just what was going on. I wish the DNC would start running ads attacking Romney—using the words of his GOP primary opponents. (This, of course, would work best on TV. First, show a series of uncredited quotes blasting Romney and his policies, then show clips of the GOPer being quoted. Then an announcer comes on with “And now, Mitt Romney claims that the Obama campaign is being nasty. Nothing’s being said now that wasn’t said then.”)
— President George H. W. Bush, Speech to Congress, March 6, 1991
Can’t wait until FoKKKsNation mocks Poppy for calling for justice, fairness, and respect back in 1991, as they did Obama . . .
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