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So I’m watching Hannity & Colmes<\/i> tonight and Hannity says something a bit surprising as he’s “interviewing” Newt Gingrich while attempting (successfully) to smear both Kennedy and Kerry in the same fell swoop.<\/p>\nSo I’m watching Hannity & Colmes<\/i> tonight and Hannity says something a bit surprising as he’s “interviewing” Newt Gingrich while attempting (successfully) to smear both Kennedy and Kerry in the same fell swoop.<\/p>\n
As he looks down at his notes, so I’m assuming he had time to plan this out, Hannity says to Gingrich about a Ted Kennedy speech today at George Washington University on the failures of Bush’s Iraq policy:<\/p>\n
…and then he moved on to something else. Hit-and-Run Smear Accomplished.<\/p>\n
But was it a smear? Would Fox’s bright, shining star and Rush’s heir apparent, Sean Hannity, simply out and out lie like that? And risk the same firing that he’s called upon CBS to do to Dan Rather? I replayed my video tape, and that’s exactly what he had said. But the outrageous charge about Kennedy seemed odd to say the least, so I did some checking on the speech today to find out for sure.<\/p>\n
At Senator Ted Kennedy’s site, the text of today’s speech<\/a> is linked on the front page, and it contains this passage:<\/p>\n Seems pretty clear that Kennedy decidedly did not<\/i> say what Hannity quoted him quite specifically as having said.<\/p>\n But this is the “Fair & Balanced” network! “America’s News Channel of Political Record” as their ads say. Surely Hannity wouldn’t make up such a quote and then claim that Kennedy — and Kerry by extension, who’s position Hannity equated with Kennedy’s — actually felt that way, would he?<\/p>\n Perhaps the text on Kennedy’s site was the original text as planned, but he veered from the text as it was originally written. So I stopped by Hannity & Colmes site for more information. They didn’t have a transcript of tonight’s show yet, but they did<\/i> have a link to what they called “Raw Data: Kennedy Speech on Iraq War<\/a>” which has a paragraph similar to the one above, but curiously, it’s missing the “cut and run” section entirely!<\/i> Here’s what they have:<\/p>\n Hmmm…did Fox have a different version of the speech? A transcript they took themselves perhaps during the actual presentation of the speech? Even so, there seemed nothing about “Those of us who would like to cut and run”. There was nothing about either cutting or<\/i> running in Fox News’ transcript.<\/p>\n I kept looking, and finally found over at C-Span the video of the actual<\/i> speech<\/a>, as given<\/i> by Ted Kennedy today.<\/p>\n Some of the text did<\/i> veer slightly from the version on Kennedy’s website. A word or two. But nothing like what either Hannity or the Fox News site described. Here’s what Kennedy said verbatim<\/i> (at 4:18 on the tape):<\/p>\nNo issue is more important today. The battle against terrorism is a battle we must win. Even those who opposed the war in Iraq understand that we cannot cut and run, that this is an American issue.<\/b> But to remain silent in the face of mounting failures by this President and this White House is to weaken our security even further, and we cannot let that happen.<\/div>\nNo issue is more important today. The battle against terrorism is a battle we must win. To remain silent in the face of mounting failures by this president and this White House is to weaken our security even further.<\/div>\nNo issue is more important today. The battle against terrorism is a battle that we must win. Even those of us who opposed the Iraq war understand that we cannot cut and run, that this is an American committment.<\/b> But to remain silent in the face of mounting failures by this President and this White House is to weaken our security even further, and we cannot let that happen.<\/div>\n