Caught this story a week or so back — but worth posting here. Fox suggested earlier this month that Obama’s fist pound with his wife, was, in fact, a “terrorist first jab.” Hilariously delightful out of touch attempts to understand “the gesture” ensue. E.D. Hill later apologized to suggesting that the gesture might have been a security threat.
It’s interesting to watch how they’ve constructed blame in the apology. Hill claims that she merely misspoke and that she didn’t mean to associate Obama with terrorism. Though, as Hertzberg’s slick little piece on the use of that term in the political discourse points out: “misspoke” would be to imply that she meant to say one thing but mistakenly said another. But that isn’t the case in a narrow, technical sense, “a fist bump, a pound, a terrorist fist jab” certainly does associate Obama with terrorism if only in a range of possible, credible interpretations that the story was supposed to sort through. It’s not like she meant to say that it “a fist bump, a pound, and definitely not a terrorist fist jab” and just said the opposite by mistake. Indeed, the “personally” part of the apology is a red herring — it addresses something different than the actual issue at stake (i.e. whether or not the statement associates Obama with terrorism). Pretty cool framing subterfuge action.
Apologies for the lack of meatier posting over the past few days, been completely swamped on my late-night shifts working for Berkman’s Internet and Democracy project and getting the ball rolling on SF ROFLevents this summer. Launch of a project on Chris Kelty’s Two Bits and a response to Mike Linksvayer’s (awesome) response to the CC future post coming up…
