MSNBC’s “Supermarket Scanner Moment”

How desperate are the ObaMedia to get their fubar candidate reelected?

How about this. They resurrect a tired old meme about rich Republican candidates being “out of touch” with the average American because the modern supermarket electronic technology befuddle and “amaze” them. Andrea Mitchell wants us all to remember poppy Bush’s “supermarket scanners moment”…Now all these years later, we find that Mitt too, is “confused and frightened” by modern technology because these “out of touch” Republicans are just like SNL’s Caveman Lawyer or something.

But MSNBC “selectively edited” the tape to make it look like Romney was bringing up Wawa’s touchtone ordering system for no other reason than to express surprise.

Look how choppy this editing job is:

No Wonder Sooper Mexican was suspicious. He found an unedited version of Romney’s comments:

In actuality, Mitt was contrasting the ridiculous over-regulation of the public sector, with the efficiency of the private sector, and used the electronic ordering system at WAWAs as an example…

You can watch the full version on his blog.

In the unedited version, it’s clear that Romney brought up the touchtone at Wawa’s not to express his “amazement” at the technology, but to contrast the private sector to the public sector. As the top commenter on the YouTube version said, “this isn’t about biased spin; it’s about flat-out lying.”

So now MSNBC has disgraced itself once again with an egregious editing job, and Andrea Mitchell has egg all over her face. My only question is whether MSNBC did this on their own, or in collusion with the Obama camp.

Another day, another attempt by the Obami to control the narrative, blows up in their faces.

If it keeps going this way, the next few months of campaign coverage may actually be kinda fun to watch.

Betsy Newmark thinks that it’s the folks at MSNBC who are out of touch.

It’s as if MSNBC had no idea that anyone else could find the video of the moment shot by some guy with a camera who was waiting to hand his book about hemp to Mitt Romney and then a blogger could figure out how they misleadingly edited the Romney video. They forgot that there are conservative bloggers out there who are capable of finding out their editing chicanery and that the internet can be used to distribute the proof of their dishonest reporting. Soon the real story goes from conservative blogs to Politico and now there are questions that MSNBC will have to answer. Just as NBC News had to fire a producer for editing the George Zimmerman tape of his 911 call, someone will probably have to lose his or her job for this if MSNBC cares at all about even the appearance of journalistic integrity. Perhaps not.

The upshot of this whole incident is that MSNBC proved to be more out of touch than the Mitt Romney they were portraying. They are the ones who don’t understand how the new media works and how they can’t get away with deceiving the public in the ways they would like to.

But then, what if they are just brazen enough not to care? They were able to do a lot of damage to George Zimmerman with their selectively edited piece on him. They were able to damage the tea party with their selectively edited piece on them. Sure, at some point, the lie is exposed, but in the meantime thousands of people have been deceived and they may never see the correct version of what happened.

UPDATE:

Andrea Mitchell responds to the brouhaha:

The Right Scoop: NO APOLOGY: MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell refuses to acknowledge they misled their viewers over Romney’s Wawa comments

RELATED (Trust me…):

Via Politico:

President Barack Obama’s campaign wants to turn Mitt Romney into the candidate of old, straight, white men.

Of course, his aides would never state it so crudely. But that’s the unmistakable aim of their political strategy of the past two months.

Obama, on the other hand, could be said to be the candidate of old, straight, white, rich women: Sympathy for ‘the Devil’: Anna Wintour ‘an Engaged Politico and Valuable Asset’ to Obama, Gushes NYTimes

Narrative FAIL.

Linked by Michelle Malkin, thanks!