For some reason, Politico felt it had to commit an outright lie about something Mike Huckabee said recently. In fact, they didn’t just invent the quote, Politico even invented the context in which he said it! Talk about media bias.
First of all let me say that I am not a supporter of Mike Huckabee. It isn’t likely that I would vote for him in a primary, though I would vote for him over a Democrat in the unlikely case that he should become the GOP nominee. So, I don’t come to this as an outrageously, outraged Huckabee supporter.
That said, let’s take a look at what Politico posted to Twitter to advertise a piece written by their Adam Lerner.
Mike Huckabee complains of ‘trashy’ women at Fox News http://t.co/ZL6WdtfVLS
— POLITICO (@politico) January 28, 2015
Just look at that headline tease. It says that Mike Huckabee called women at Fox News “trashy.”
One might think this to be quite a shocking slam on his former colleagues from Huckabee. I mean, this would be quite a thing if a former Fox News personality were to call his female co-workers “trashy.”
But, when one actually clicks through to the full Politico piece one finds that Huckabee didn’t say anything like what the teaser claims he said. Here is what he said as reported by Adam Lerner.
“In the South, or in the Midwest, there in Iowa, you would not have people who would just throw the F-bomb or use gratuitous profanity in a professional setting,” Huckabee told host Jan Mickelson in a Friday appearance on Des Moines’ “Mickelson in the Morning.”
“In New York, not only do the men do it, but the women,” he said.
“My gosh, this is worse than locker-room talk,” Huckabee continued. “As we would say in the South, that’s just trashy.”
Now, notice that Huckabee did not call his former co-workers “trashy.” In fact, he didn’t mention his former co-workers at all. There was not a single mention of Fox News in that excerpt.
He was clearly talking about the general population you’d meet on the streets of New York City. It was clear he was calling their behavior boorish.
But even more to the point, Huckabee didn’t focus on “trashy” women, either. He was calling people trashy, not “women.” He did not distinguish one iota between men or women in that quote. He treated the two sexes as equally trashy and lamented their behavior.
If you want outrage, it is outrageous that Politico so purposefully lied with this story.
Amusingly, the move may have caused conservatives like me to have a bit of sympathy for Huckabee where we otherwise might not be disposed to offer it. As Noah Rothman notes, “By doing this, Politico has actually generated some sympathy among conservatives who are otherwise hostile to the former Arkansas governor’s campaign that is premised on litigating cultural grievances.”
It is awfully easy to circle the wagons around the Huckster in this case!
