It's Context, Doofus!

It's election season again. I can tell because I'm wearing out the MUTE button on my television remote so I don't have to listen to three or four political commercials every nine minutes. I'm pretty certain that if I listened to them, though, I'd hear (or see) some word or phrase taken out of context in almost every one of them. Friggin' negative advertisements...


That, and a random bumper sticker I saw not long ago, got me thinking about "context." Every politician, regardless of party, claims that he or she was "quoted out of context" on a regular basis. My news sources don't zero in on sound bites, though, so I (usually) hear or see the entire statement, not the "suspect" phrase. You know exactly what I mean: Incumbent A says, "My opponent thinks Nigeria is a shithole country!" Opponent B's next television ad trumpets the claim that "Incumbent A says 'Nigeria is a shithole country!'"

Yeah, context...

Anyway, the bumper sticker I saw (and I've seen several over the years) said, "The government didn't build my business. I did!"

That's from a 2012 Romney-Ryan claim that Obama isn't "business-friendly." And here's why: it's called Obama's "You didn't build that speech." The paragraph in question follows.

"If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you've got a business – you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet. "

Of course, Fox News (as the unofficial mouthpiece of the Republican presidential campaign) immediately seized on a single sentence from the speech, and Romney-Ryan jumped on board right away: "If you've got a business -- you didn't build that." Never mind that this section of the President's speech was about how government provides and manages the infrastructure that makes it possible to operate the business you "built without gummint help."

Jeez, some people are such sheep...

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