As we see time and again, the inaccurate story that Fox News and conservative blogs kick off, other outlets eventually pick up more or less whole cloth. And so it is that the
comments in which Teamsters President James (or Jim, but not Jimmy) Hoffa urged listeners to vote have been edited to sound like a call to violence.
Media Matters reminds us of the immediate context of the quotes that have been repeatedly taken out of context:
President Obama this is your army. We are ready to march. And president Obama we want one thing: Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. Jobs. That's what we’re going to tell him. He’s going to be—and when he sees what we’re doing here he will be inspired. But he needs help and you know what? Everybody here's got to vote. If we go back and keep the eye on the prize, let's take these sons of a bitches out and give America back to America where we belong! Thank you very much!
But the extremely and misleadingly shortened version Fox used is the one that's making the rounds, in a host of publications that aren't necessarily trying to do Fox's partisan work for it, but may just be too damn lazy to get the story right, or too addicted to controversy to want to do so. Falling into the latter category is Politico, which in a story that notes that the "Teamsters slammed conservative [...] media for supposedly editing Hoffa’s Labor Day remarks to suggest that Hoffa was inciting violence against members of Tea Party organiations (sic)," totally edits Hoffa's Labor Day remarks to suggest that he was inciting violence.
In fact, the longest segment of Hoffa's original speech quoted in the article is seven words: "take these son-of-a-bitches out." When that's the context you're offered, Hoffa's subsequent statements about standing by his words sound a little different than when you get the part about how "Everybody here's got to vote" that immediately preceded the part Politico does deign to quote.
Another piece of context that's missing from this whole manufactured controversy, as publications from Politico to the Washington Post run stories with the edited quote and Michele Bachmann uses Hoffa as the boogeyman in a fundraising email, is just how common "take them out" is as electoral language. In fact, Bachmann herself used exactly those words in 2010:
"I am the No. 1 target for one more extremist group to defeat this November," she said. "We need to have your help for candidates like me. We need you to take out some of these bad guys."
How many stories screaming about how Michele Bachmann asked the tea party for help, saying "We need you to take out some of these bad guys," do you remember in any of these publications then?