{"id":121,"date":"2010-07-13T04:00:44","date_gmt":"2010-07-13T10:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=121"},"modified":"2010-07-13T04:00:44","modified_gmt":"2010-07-13T10:00:44","slug":"the-misspoke-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=121","title":{"rendered":"The Misspoke Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a>The misstatements never seem to end.\u00a0 Just when you thought it was safe, another errant misstatement comes flying out of nowhere.\u00a0 And not from where you expect.\u00a0 Or then again, maybe from exactly where you expect.\u00a0\u00a0After a hailstorm of criticism,\u00a0Charles Bolden, Administrator (for now) of NASA has been accused of misstating the mission of the agency that he leads.\u00a0 What political opponent has leveled these charges against Bolden, the former\u00a0Marine General and retired astronaut\u00a0nominated by President Obama\u00a0and confirmed by the Senate on July 15, 2009 to head NASA?\u00a0 None other that the President’s\u00a0own Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs.\u00a0 Add General Bolden to the growing list of those\u00a0— Obama’s grandmother, Obama’s former pastor, Poland, Israel\u00a0— who have been thrown under the bus by the administration of “hope and change.”\u00a0 But, that’s a post for another day.<\/p>\n

Bolden,\u00a0answering the very first question\u00a0from\u00a0an\u00a0Al Jazeera interviewer\u00a0(video here<\/a>),\u00a0stated that President Obama\u00a0charged him with three\u00a0main tasks as\u00a0the new (if confirmed) NASA Administrator, the foremost being to<\/p>\n

“find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.” was to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Anyone watching the first two minutes of this interview, where Bolden spoke clearly and plainly about NASA’s mission, would have difficulty making the case that Bolden had simply misspoke.\u00a0 Enter Robert Gibbs.\u00a0\u00a0Responding to a reporter’s question about the kerfuffle arising out of Bolden’s Al Jazeera interview, Gibb’s said he thought Administrator Bolden had “misspoken.”<\/a>\u00a0 There you have it.\u00a0 Nothing more to see here, ladies and gentlemen.\u00a0 Next question.\u00a0 Let’s move on.\u00a0 And, most will move on, simply because the President’s chief spokesman\u00a0deflected the controversy with the well-worn defense, “He simply misspoke.”<\/p>\n

The “misspoke” defense has been around for as long as human history.\u00a0 While not recorded in the Genesis account of Creation, I wouldn’t be surprised if Adam or Eve were the very first humans to use this defense (to no avail).\u00a0 Today, everyone uses the “misspoke defense.”\u00a0 From politicians\u00a0and bureaucrats to preachers and bloggers,\u00a0many want to escape from annoying and inconvenient\u00a0questions about their past words — either spoken or written.\u00a0 This defense, whether\u00a0presented by President Obama’s Press Secretary or your favorite preacher or blogger,\u00a0should<\/strong> become\u00a0inoperative when the earlier language, now under scrutiny\u00a0(i.e., Bolden’s answer), is obviously clear on its face, regardless of how one wants to try to spin out of their own tangled web of words.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0from all\u00a0spheres of our culture and\u00a0from\u00a0every religious and political\u00a0persuasion, people still trot out the “misspoke”\u00a0defense.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because it still works.\u00a0 But, the effectiveness of this defense has weakened in this new media age, where the internet and non-traditional sources of\u00a0information have replaced traditional means of communication.\u00a0 And when you can listen to and compare\u00a0primary sources\u00a0— video from Al Jazeera’s interview with\u00a0NASA Administrator Bolden vs.\u00a0Robert Gibb’s explanation of that interview — then you can come to your own conclusion, without Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, Wolf Blitzer, Sean Hannity, or\u00a0an influential blogger\u00a0trying to tell you what the truth is.\u00a0 Stated clearly and simply, with no ambiguity, the “misspoke” defense will not persuade public opinion the way it once did.\u00a0 Not in political life.\u00a0 And, by the way, not in Southern Baptist life either.\u00a0 Much to the chagrin of all who still love the “misspoke” defense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The misstatements never seem to end.\u00a0 Just when you thought it was safe, another errant misstatement comes flying out of nowhere.\u00a0 And not from where you expect.\u00a0 Or then again, maybe from exactly where you expect.\u00a0\u00a0After a hailstorm of criticism,\u00a0Charles Bolden, Administrator (for now) of NASA has been accused of misstating the mission of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[208,665,695,711,735,848],"class_list":["post-121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-charles-bolden","tag-misspoke","tag-nasa","tag-new-media","tag-obama","tag-robert-gibbs"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-1X","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=121"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}