Soros blogs were left scrambling late yesterday evening after spending all day carefully constructing a house of cards narrative designed to spin Jimmy Hoffa Jr.’s incendiary remarks into a positive light. Media Matters specifically accused Fox News of “editing” Hoffa’s remarks — apparently “editing” them in real time as they came out of his mouth — and further blamed conservatives such as myself for “buying into it.” (It’s also important to mention that MMfA is a union-funded blog defending a union in this story.)

Right-wing bloggers misled by dishonest Fox News video editing are attacking Teamsters President James Hoffa, Jr. for supposedly urging violence against Tea Party activists during a Labor Day speech. Conservatives are also attacking President Obama, who appeared at the event, for “sanctioning violence against fellow Americans” by failing to denounce Hoffa.

Media Matters and other progressives hammered away with their ridiculous “edited video” narrative, their only defense for the rest of the day:

Loesch’s comments in particular were already way over the top. But they became truly embarrassing at around 3 p.m., when the whole story collapsed after Fox finally got around to airing what Henry had called the “full quote” of Hoffa’s “take these son of a bitches out” comment …

Except later on, after Soros bloggers spent so much effort attempting to spin this as a “doctored” video, Hoffa doubled down on the remarks and made it very clear that he wasn’t talking about “voting.” TPM inadvertently wholly destroyed the careful narrative Media Matters spent literally all day fabricating:

Teamsters union president James Hoffa would say it all again if he could, he told TPM Monday.

Hoffa riled up Fox News and the right wingMonday with a Labor Day speech in Detroit in which he called Republican members of Congress “sons of bitches” and said union workers are ready to “go to war” with the tea party next year and “take out” Republicans at the ballot box.

Hoffa said he’d say the exact same words all over again.

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Brent Bozell has a great piece on the irony surrounding the media reaction to Planned Parenthood.

The same gaggle of broadcast TV watchdogs which has mustered endless outrage over the notion that the Catholic Church would fail to alert authorities about sexual abuse of minors is utterly uninterested in the sexual abuse of minors when someone more pleasing to secular progressives – like that abortion factory Planned Parenthood — is caught on camera.

Live Action has been exposing Planned Parenthood since 2007. You would think that by 2011, their clinic personnel would be more careful. It is just the opposite. Their disinterest toward statutory rape and child sexual abuse is shocking.

[...]

This woman has now been fired. But lying and squashing information is apparently Planned Parenthood policy. Another video broke, this time from Falls Church, Virginia, where a clinic worker told the man “We don’t necessarily look at the legal status, like I said. Abortion appointments do require photo ID. It’s nothing as far as records. It’s just photo ID that’s ever going to be required.”

[...]

The networks refused to acknowledge these stings. But it’s not a matter of journalistic principle, objecting to hidden cameras. It’s all about politics.

Twenty years ago, on the night of Halloween, 1991, ABC’s “Prime Time Live” aired a story based on its own investigation, complete with hidden cameras, of…crisis pregnancy centers. They were out to expose the allegedly awful practice of pro-lifers advising pregnant women against abortions. Within days of the ABC story, CBS and NBC also aired reports with hidden cameras and female producers lying about being pregnant.

Bozell’s response is some much-needed sense in a conversation that has sorely lacked it.

Big Time Feminist Amanda Marcotte, most notable for embarrassing herself while working for the John Edwards campaign, prizes her outdated snark (is there a more annoying term for this word?) more than the issue which she claims to care for in order to make bank: women’s causes.

Because if complicity in whoring out underage girls to satisfy money a pimp doesn’t scream GIRL POWER, I don’t know what does.

No, the worst thing is someone who makes a living off of being some feminist messiah refusing to speak out against child sex-trafficking because they would rather defend a company than kids.

“Let’s ri-i-i-i-i-ide …”

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For Big Journalism readers keeping score at home, every time vote or voter fraud is raised as an issue by the Right, Democrats and the Left, often led by TPM, get so crazy they fall out of their collective tree. See this site search for “True the Vote” at TPM, for example – 1,370 hits for what is still a developing story. Wow!

So, it’s not a surprise to see them jump crazy today on a report about an app to combat voter fraud broken at Big Government today. Check it out. It’s free.

Brought to you by ElectionJournal.org, the website that broke the Black Panther intimidation story in 2008. iReport is the first iPhone application dedicated to reporting voter fraud, intimidation and other election irregularities.

What’s unclear is if TPM is worried about ACORN, various Democrat nuts, or fraudulent voters getting caught by the short and curlies with Mike Roman’s new app. Careful, TPM, I know Roman somewhat, he can be a real ball-breaker, if you get my drift! (more…)

Nothing like a little new media joust on a Saturday afternoon in the fall. Josh Marshall on both Obama and Bill Clinton today at TPM:

Being president is hard. Being president two years into your first term is hard. And being at the center of the polarizing political storm — as Obama is today and Clinton was 16 years ago — tends to wipe the political genius and midas touch and all the other good stuff right off of you. 10% unemployment doesn’t make you look that good either.

This isn’t justifying any mistakes. But I’m surprised how short the memories are of many people who do this political analysis thing for a living.

Josh Marshall on then President George Bush at TPM, Oct 1, 2004 – short memories, indeed, or selective, perhaps. Then, again,  maybe he was simply being prescient given where Obama finds himself today.

I think we all know that the presidency is tremendously hard work, even for a president like this one who keeps notoriously light hours. It’s amazing to look back at the way the office ages the men who occupy it. But worn out and complaining isn’t exactly presidential or an example of strong leadership. No one’s making him be president after all. Maybe it’s time to move on. He’s punched his ticket. He can move on to the next gig.

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo has issued an update acknowledging some comments made in the post highlighted at Big Journalism were in error.

In Josh Marshall’s article “What were they thinking?” of January 27th, 2010, Mr. Marshall referrs to a wiretapping plot and four times to a plot to bug the offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu by James O’Keefe and the three other conservative activists:

-O’Keefe was allegedly using his cell phone to film the attempt to bug Landrieu’s office as it happened.

-And let’s say they got something really juicy off of Sen. Landrieu’s tapped phone line. What exactly were they going to do with it?

-But they were never going to protect you from an investigation into bugging the office of a United States senator.

-Now, one might speculate that they were going to use the bug to get leads that they would then report out and surface by other means.

-And filming the bugging as it happened definitely suggests they didn’t plan on keeping the thing a secret.

There are no allegations of any wiretap plot in the FBI affidavit, and a law enforcement official has conceded that the four men were not attempting to wiretap, bug, or intercept calls.  Furthermore, legal representation for the accused has gone on record stating there were no intentions to tap phones in the Senator’s office.

We kindly ask you to issue a correction/retraction to the story.

We have been/will be making similar requests of other news sources to correct similar errors.  Some, such as the Washington Post and MSNBC’s David Shuster, already have posted corrections or retractions.

Yesterday, I made the mistake of answering the following email, addressed to Big Government editor Mike Flynn, promptly:

Hi Mr. Flynn,

I’m a reporter from the Business Insider working on a short item about the new Big Journalism site launched today. Any chance you’d have Breitbart’s email so I can get in touch with him?

Would appreciate it so much.

Best regards,

Gillian

–

Gillian Reagan

The Business Insider

XXX@businessinsider.com

XXX Fifth Avenue, 7th Fl

New York, NY 10003

646-484-XXXX

twitter: XXXXXXX

I spoke with Ms. Reagan for about ten minutes and gave her a long explanation as to why I started Big Journalism. I awoke to something so far off from what I said that I called her back and asked her specifically about the following quote that is a composite of her question, a hodge-podge of my response and flat out lies.

Let me begin with the biggest deception of all: Business Insider is a front for Gawker, the notorious leftist/media snark site.  If she had been up front with me, like any sane person I never would have responded.  (Go to www.Gawker.com to see why.)  But she came to me under false pretenses.

Next, let me point out that when I told her she’d misquoted me, she told me that she had taped the conversation without my knowledge or my consent!

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