The Washington Post embarrassed itself and its poor victim by attempting to set Mitt Romney up on the issue of health care.
A WaPo reporter (term used loosely) went into a diner before Mitt Romney arrived and baited a waitress there to challenge him on heath care. Then the Post was then dumb enough to post the video including the part where they where trying to bait the woman up.
They where trying to manufacture a moment where a simple waitress, stewing over the lack of socialized medicine, challenges a Republican candidate and puts him in his place. Because WE ALL KNOW to the modern media, a waitress making 5 bucks an hour plus tips is more qualified to run the country than a dual Harvard grad (JD/MBA) who is a former Governor of a state that passed an extensive heath care reform package.
Instead of the waitress putting him in his place, Romney got video he could use in a campaign commercial and she was so befuddled by his replies she was reduced to sniveling that she wasn’t making any tips while he was in the restaurant.
BUT DON’T GET ME WRONG. I don’t blame her at all. I’m sure paying for the health care her family receives is a financial burden for her. I don’t blame her for heckling him, SHE IS A VICTIM of the Washington Post.
- [Note: You can watch the video here, since, according to Firebug, it threw 56 javascript errors when we took the Post up on their offer to embed the video. IE7 users were may have been having browser crashes due to the video.]
Romney hits it out the park. He only missed one thing… He could have helped defuse the situation while injecting humor AND making himself look good by smiling from ear to ear and jokingly inviting the woman to move to his state. THAT would have been classic, but still he nailed it.
I do hope we’re not going to have to suffer this type of “journalism” from now until November. This is truly an embarrassment for the Post. Although I guess it is to be expected in the Michael Moore era. Silly me I thought the Post was supposed to, you know, report the news and not try to manufacture it.
(disclaimer after the jump)
BTW: This is the first time I’ve written anything about any Republicans in the 2008 race. If you take this as proof I’m a Romney supporter, well, you’re more confident in my decision than I am. I’m mostly ignoring the race right now, but what the Post did was too shameful not to blog.
