Why let facts get in the way of the narrative

ABC broadcast edits out Michelle Obama claim that Chicago teen was killed by an ‘automatic weapon’

In an interview with Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts aired this morning, First Lady Michelle Obama recalled the tragic death of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton who was shot and killed in Chicago after performing during the President’s Inauguration celebration in Washington D.C.

“She was caught in the line of fire because some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need,” the First Lady explained. “I just don’t want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. I want them to know that we put them first.”

Chicago police reported, however, that Pendleton was shot by a man who “opened fire with a handgun before fleeing in a waiting car.”

It is extremely unlikely that the murder weapon was an automatic handgun, an extremely rare occurrence, even in the streets of Chicago. An overwhelming majority of handguns bought and sold in America are semi-automatic. Police officials have not recovered the firearm, but prosecutors stated that the accused attacker shot “at least six times” into the crowd.

For the broadcast, ABC’s Good Morning America producers edited out the First Lady’s “automatic weapon” line.

She was standing out in a park with her friends in a neighborhood blocks away from where my kids grow – grew – up, where our house is. She had just taken a chemistry test. And she was caught in the line of firebecause some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need. I just don’t want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. I want them to know that we put them first.

In the web edition of the story, however, Michelle Obama appears to be quoted in full:

“She was standing out in a park with her friends in a neighborhood blocks away from where my kids…grew up, where our house is. She had just taken a chemistry test. And she was caught in the line of fire because some kids had some automatic weapons they didn’t need,” she said. “I just don’t want to keep disappointing our kids in this country. I want them to know that we put them first.”

From a comment to this article which clearly describes Michelle Obama:

In the case of Michelle Obama, affirmative action did all three. The partners at Sidley Austin learned this the hard way. In 1988, they hired her out of Harvard Law under the impression that the degree meant something. It did not. By 1991, Michelle was working in the public sector as an assistant to the mayor. By 1993, she had given up her law license.

Had the partners investigated Michelle's background, they would have foreseen the disaster to come. Sympathetic biographer Liza Mundy writes, "Michelle frequently deplores the modern reliance on test scores, describing herself as a person who did not test well."

She did not write well, either. Mundy charitably describes her senior thesis at Princeton as "dense and turgid." The less charitable Christopher Hitchens observes, "To describe [the thesis] as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be 'read' at all, in the strict sense of the verb. This is because it wasn't written in any known language."

Michelle had to have been as anxious at Harvard Law as Bart Simpson was at Genius School. Almost assuredly, the gap between her writing and that of her highly talented colleagues marked her as an affirmative action admission, and the profs finessed her through.