I woke up this morning to see two diaries on the rec list - one of them indicating that Obama folded on the Bush tax cuts, and the other being a counter to the first. I became immediately skeptical about this article from Huffington Post, knowing that the President had planned a face-to-face meeting with the GOP on November 16th for the sole purpose of discussing the Bush tax cuts, and could not have possibly made any decisions ahead of this very important meeting. Yet I was astonished to see how many DKOS readers seemed to have bought the (no other than Huffington Post) article hook, line and sinker. Another element that further increased my suspicion was that the article was based on an interview with David Axelrod, which was reported by Huffington Post, but there was NO VIDEO or AUDIO footage provided by Huffington Post or any other outlet.
I proceeded to read the article, and not surprisingly, no where in the article was Axelrod actually quoted as saying that Obama would extend the Bush tax cuts. But by deliberately posting a large bold headline titled: "WH GIVES IN ON BUSH TAX CUTS" Huffington Post already primed readers to interpret the entire article from that perspective. In addition, what Huffington Post did in the article itself, was to trickily juxapose two sentences from Axelrod about the administration's positions with Huffington Post's own deliberately twisted interpretation of what Axelrod meant:
"We don't want that tax increase to go forward for the middle class," he said, which means the administration will have to accept them all for some unspecified period of time. "But plainly, what we can't do is permanently extend these high income taxes."
SO THIS IS WHAT AXELROD SAID:
"We don't want that tax increase to go forward for the middle class.""But plainly, what we can't do is permanently extend these high income taxes."
HERE IS HUFFINGTON POST'S FILLER CLAUSE: (which a poor or hasty reader would mistakenly think is Axelrod's words because of the position of the clause):
which means the administration will have to accept them all for some unspecified period of time.
But a reader, who is already primed from the misleading headline, would not readily catch that nuance. In other parts of the article, Huffington Post again goes on to provide it's own distorted reporting of Axelrod's views without actually providing any real evidence of his saying or implying any of those things. They accomplish this by mixing partial quotes with their own language, in attempts to mislead or confuse a poor or hasty reader into believing that the entire paragraph was all Axelrod's words:
Although the president "took the position he felt was the right position" -- favoring a continuation of the cuts only for families earning up to $250,000 -- Axelrod portrayed this "optimal" stance as unrealistic in the lame-duck Congress that begins next week.
Again, the only words from David Axelrod are these:
"took the position he felt was the right position." "optimal."
Having said this, readers would be well advised to keep in mind that OBama has planned a very important meeting on November 16 (Next Tuesday). So it would extremely irresponsible of Axelrod to give an interview stating exactly what the outcome of the president's decisions will be BEFORE the meeting.
Some people have said that they saw ABC and CNN report the same thing. But that's not saying a whole lot. The interview was supposedly exclusive to the Huffington Post and they must have gotten the report from the Huffington post. Furthermore, both these stations have resorted to dishonest reporting when it suits them. And unless either station can provide audio/video footage of Axelrod, I will take their "reports" with the appropriate amount of salt. Meanwhile, I encourage some readers here on DKOS to approach the MSM (including Huffington Post) with the same suspicion and level of scrutiny that they give to President Obama and his administration.