Posted by Tina
Conservatives are feeling a bit weary and under siege. The long road to our Republican convention is taxing and Saul Alinsky style dirty tricks from the opposition party only make the journey more so. But never fear, our candidates will be tested and vetted until our choice is made at which time our candidate will be practiced and ready to take on the President in the coming battle. In the meantime it doesn’t hurt to take a time out now and then to enjoy the gaffs and misteps of the President, particularly when he hands us such a lovely gift. Have you heard? Last week the President made fun of a past president, Rutherford B, Hayes (R), intimating the man was backward in his thinking (or stupid…unenlightened…a fool…not as bright as The One…take your pick).
The Washington Times has the quotes to prove it. First the President and then a rebuttal:
“One of my predecessors, President Rutherford B. Hayes, reportedly said about the telephone: ‘It’s a great invention but who would ever want to use one?'”
“That’s why he’s not on Mt. Rushmore.””He’s looking backwards, he’s not looking forward. He’s explaining why we can’t do something instead of why we can do something.”
This mischaracterization of a Civil War veteran was not only wrong as we shall see but also reveals sloppiness, mean spiritedness, and deep conceit in a man who must be feeling mighty desperate about his chances in the fall to make such an ignorant statement.
Nan Card, curator of manuscripts at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio, set the record straight:
“I’ve heard that before, and no one ever knows where it came from,” Card said of Hayes’s alleged phone remark, “but people just keep repeating it and repeating it, so it’s out there.”
Wait, so Hayes didn’t even say the quote that Obama is mocking him for? “No, no,” Card confirmed.
She then read aloud a newspaper article from June 29, 1877, which describes Hayes’s delight upon first experiencing the magic of the telephone. The Providence Journal story reported that as Hayes listened on the phone, “a gradually increasing smile wreathe[d] his lips and wonder shone in his eyes more and more.” Hayes took the phone from his ear, “looked at it a moment in surprise and remarked, ‘That is wonderful.'”
Those who wish to get in on the soul soothing fun that created the photo with caption above can find it at quickmeme.com. The site has posted a number of Rutherford retorts. You can even create your own captioned portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes! (CAUTION: A few are less than civil; some were created by The Ones minions)
And then there is the one about people declining to support Christopher Columbus because they knew the earth was flat. In fact, every educated person since the days of the Greeks knew the earth is round. They just thought it was larger than Columbus did, so he would never reach the Indies. And guess what? They were right. Columbus was wrong. He ran into the new American continent and incorrectly called the inhabitants Indians.
This type of stuff still happens today. Have you read about Tyler Clementi who jumped off the bridge last year because his roommate secretly recorded him having gay sex, outed him and broadcast it over the internet? The roommate was just found guilty of a hate crime by a jury and could face up to 10 years in prison. Tragic right?
Except there was no broadcast of the sex over the internet. Clementi’s parents knew he was gay so he wasn’t
“outed” and he knew about the video recording so he shut the computer down and powered off the strip. But everyone is just positive of the false version of the story. Because we refuse to read. There is a very detailed and well-researched version of this story in the New Yorker. It is full of facts to it is a long read, which means most people won’t do it and they’ll just repeat lies.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/02/06/120206fa_fact_parker?currentPage=1
This is why Snopes is the most important journalism on the internet. Which is a pretty sad statement about journalism today.
Princess … couldn’t he just have been hurt, deeply hurt, that his roommate would do such a thing?
It was a shabby, hurtful, callous thing to do, was it not?
Shabby, hurtful, and callous enough to persuade a young person that there was no future in this “life”?
Think again.
Ah, yes … we will have to see if the second term weans the staff off of Wikipedia.
Libby: “Shabby, hurtful, and callous enough to persuade a young person that there was no future in this “life”?”
It was a shabby, hurtful, callous thing to do. But it isn’t the first time a kid did something like this and suicide wasn’t the result.
We have no idea what drove this guy to commit SUICIDE…the taking of his own life…the choice not to continue to live and face up to lifes challenges. Even if he left a note (I have not heard that he did) we could not know the things that contributed to his state of mind.
You need to “think again”. We don’t convict people on what could have been true.
AND LET’S NOT FORGET…Obama’s incredible goofy gaf. He could learn a few things, even from Wikipedia. Unfortunately for him the truth about his error comes from a very reliable source.