From the August 16 post: “Obama said Muslims had a right to build a mosque. The media reported that he supported building it. Obama said he supported the right to build. The media reported that he supported building it.”
It has been suggested that the media has cleared that up afterward.
On Sept 9 Obama said: “If you can build a church on a site, if you can build a synagogue on a site, if you can build a Hindu temple on a site, then you should be able to build a mosque on a site.”
On CNN’s situation room that afternoon their discussion included this:
Anchor: after his waffling (see Aug. 16 post) “this was very clear and very definitive where he stood on the mosque”
Ed Henry “No doubt about it. When he first spoke at the White House … and then walked it back … “today there was sort of no hedging he just said (the quote above). That sounds like an endorsement.”
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15 hours ago
I would agree that the actual words that the President spoke did not support the conclusion of the CNN commentators and a pox on their house for reporting it that way.
ReplyDeleteStill, when my wife says “would you like to go out to dinner” I am astute enough to know that she is not asking a question. My point is that at this stage in the Mosque discussion a statement about the “right”, which was never an issue, only emphasizes what was NOT said.
From the narrative above I can easily get irritated at both the press and the Prez.
I agree with Tom. I posted a similar point when this came up before in the thread "First amendment parallels."
ReplyDeleteO is implicitly distorting the mosque opponents' position by suggesting that they contend that Muslims do not have a right to build a mosque in lower Manhattan. It's a poor method of argumentation, but a method of argumentation it is, and it even has a name: a "straw man" argument. So if O is making an argument of any kind in response to the Mosque opponents, is it really that big of a stretch to infer that O supports building the Mosque?
Does the fact that former Speaker of the House Gingrich says that they don't have a right to build there mean that it is not entirely a straw man?
ReplyDeleteGingrich: "And I think we ought to be honest about the fact that we have a right -- and this happens all the time in America. You know, Nazis don't have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There's no reason for us to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center."
I think Newt is alone on that. I'm not aware of anyone else who has advanced that proposition. And I think it's safe to say that O is not debating Newt - he's debating the mosque opponents generally.
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