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March 31, 2004
Dave Letterman, Enemy of the State

This is just ridiculous. It's very funny, but let's not let that distract us from how awful it is.

The story:
On Monday, Letterman showed a hilarious clip of the president giving a speech in Florida during which a kid in a baseball cap was standing behind him, bored to tears. The speech goes on and the kid is SO bored. He yawns like 5 times, stretches his neck, looks at his watch, does a low bend at the waist, and just generally appears beside himself with ennui. Who can blame him?

Letterman showed this under the title "George W. Bush Invigorating America's Youth." Big laughs, it was great. No big deal.

Then they show the clip on CNN, and the anchor says, "We're being told by the White House that the kid, as funny as he was, was edited into that video."

Later, a different anchor showed the clip and said, "OK, we're told that that kid was there at that event, but not necessarily standing behind the president."

Last night, Dave showed these two clips and said, "That, ladies and gentlemen, is a 100% lie. The kid was exactly as we showed him."

There are two possibilities here, and both of them are outrageous.
1) The White House is calling CNN and directly feeding them flat-out lies, which they are then running without checking. Or...
2) Two different CNN anchors made a "mistake" and accidentally just made up that White House thing out of the clear blue sky. This is apparently what CNN is saying.

Obviously #2 is a load of crap. Nobody makes a "mistake" like that, citing the White House as a source.

"Oh, I'm sorry, what I meant to say was, 'We're NOT being told by the White House that this video was edited.' Did I say we were being told? My bad."

That only leaves explanation #1, which is absurd and terrifying.

Why would they say anything at all about something like that? I suppose they're defending the president's ability to engage 14-year-olds for a full hour? There was no political damage being done here, and yet they still feel the need to deny, deny, deny! It seems obvious that this could easily be checked. What the hell is the matter with these people?

Send in the guys in the white coats, it's time for somebody to be committed.

Overspun has the video. Check it out.

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