Nobody clapped / “Bullshit; go back to Harvard”
May 16th, 2008
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washingt…
Is this another Bosnian sniper incident, where a Democratic candidate for president describes a scene involving some personal courage, but later videotape shows that maybe perhaps it wasn’t really quite all like that exactly?
Sen. Barack Obama, the leading Democratic candidate for his party’s nomination, is very fond of telling receptive audiences the story about how last May he walked right into the automotive lion’s den of Detroit and told those industrialists they were going to have to shape up, change the way they do things and start making more fuel-efficient vehicles to protect our environment.
“And I have to say,” the straight-talking Obama tells his chuckling followers, “that when I delivered that speech, the room got really quiet. [Laughter] Nobody clapped.”
Well, in honor of Obama’s return campaign visit back to Michigan this week, someone — perhaps Republicans, perhaps someone closer to home politically — assembled videotape of Obama’s oft-told tale and spliced it side by side with videotape of that actual Detroit speech.
You’ll never guess what. The room wasn’t quiet at all. Obama, in fact, got a loud round of applause. And at the end of his address the camera’s view of him at the podium is partially blocked because the audience of local businesspeople and automotive executives was rising to give him a standing ovation.
I’ve got just one question: do we call this an incident of Obama lying about reality, or do we call this an incident of Obama plagiarizing Robert Reich’s almost identical fictional story about meeting with business folks:
Robert Reich, Quote Doctor
A Washington memoirist puts words in people’s mouths.
By Jonathan Rauch
Locked in the Cabinet, Robert Reich’s new memoir of his years as labor secretary in the Clinton administration, is an engaging policy memoir: insightful, often witty and, what’s most unusual for wonk kiss and tells, easy to read, partly because it’s told in long stretches of well-written dialogue that add up to scores of novelistic scenes of Washington at work. The book reads like good fiction. Unfortunately, some of it is.
Call me old-fashioned, but I’ve always believed that there is something special about quotation marks. Whatever is between them, in nonfiction, is supposed to reflect accurately words that some real person actually said…
perhaps most striking of all, consider a set piece in which Reich speaks to the National Association of Manufacturers. He describes himself as being ambushed by cigar-chomping capitalists who hiss at him so loudly that he has to yell to be heard. “They plan to carve me up into small pieces,” he writes. “There isn’t a lady in the room. All men, in dark suits. They’ve finished lunch. Some are smoking cigars. Others are quietly smirking, ready for the kill.” His speech over, Reich is lambasted by a “John,” and Reich’s answer elicits an eruption of “Wrong!” “Bullshit!” and “Go back to Harvard!” As Reich speaks, the audience hisses so loudly “that I’m not sure anyone can hear me.” The cigar smoke, he says, “is making my eyes water. I feel dizzy.” He says, “We’re in a boxing arena, John’s the champ, and the crowd is loving every minute.” Finally, the meeting over, he races “out the back exit before they can pummel me.”…
the attendance list shows that a third or more of the people present were women (including the NAM representative with whom I spoke). If anyone actually was inclined to light up a cigar after breakfast, he would have been breaking the NAM’s no-smoking rule, according to an association representative (who, like another witness I talked to, saw no cigars). Most important, a transcript of the meeting shows a respectful Q and A session, in which none of the comments attributed to “John”–nor any like them–were actually made.
One would hardly expect a roomful of corporate reps to hiss, boo, and shout “bullshit” at a sitting U.S. labor secretary. Sure enough, the transcript shows nothing nastier than sprinkled applause and laughter. I asked Richard Boyd, the professional court reporter who transcribed the session, whether his transcript might have omitted hisses, boos, and imprecations. “I never witnessed anything like that with Robert Reich or anybody else at a NAM meeting,” he said. “I’m absolutely certain I would remember it.” Reich portrays himself as the little guy standing up to a roomful of abusive capitalists–pure Hollywood.
I love the way these Democratic politicos
(a) are treated politely by businessmen
(b) none-the-less, they decide to lie grotesquely about it, to make American business people seem like bullies and skunks.
Speaking as someone who has worked my butt off to deliver value to 25,000 + different customers over the past few years (in purely consensual transactions - something neither Obama or Reich can say), I demand an explanation for this bullshit.
Actually, scratch that. Instead, I want both of their corpses hanging from the telephone pole outside my house by sundown.
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