On Monday your humble correspondent speculated how the New Republic or Politico or other liberal sources would spin the Jonathan Gruber video scandal story in which he boasted about perpetrating Obamacare deception in order to get it passed. I offered bonus points to whichever liberal site could dream up the most creative spin control to explain away the viral video. Well, congratulations to Politico for the most entertaining spin.
How did they do it? Besides being rather late to the story, they finally got around to it today, they were careful to bury it with no reference to any of the Gruber Obamacare deception videos on the front page. On top of that they made both of their stories laughably brief without even posting the original Gruber video which set off the outcry or even a link to it. Finally, they made Fox News, not Gruber, the real focus of their reports. First off we start with the belated buried Politico report by Lucy McCalmont that announces "New video surfaces of Obamacare architect" and then gives no link to first video.
The video above is what the Politico missed. Instead they posted a video of Megyn Kelly introducing a brief statement by Gruber. Get it? Link Fox news to the story and avoid the first more detailed video. Here is a bit of McCalmont's brevity on this subject which is a whole 183 words long:
A new video has surfaced of a key architect of Obamacare slamming voters once again.
“American voters are too stupid to understand the difference,” Jonathan Gruber said in a clip of remarks he made last year discussing the passage of Obamacare. The clip aired Tuesday on Fox News’ “The Kelly File.”
It is the second video of Gruber, a professor at MIT and former Romney adviser, taking aim at the intelligence of the American electorate.
If you think that story was short it is actually lengthy compared to the other Politico report which is a mere paragraph long and reproduced here in its entirety. Even more laughable is that it is buried deep in its Huddle section with a whole bunch of other stories. If you keep your eye out for Gruber you might miss it because the emphasis is on Senator Angus King:
KING GETS INTO IT WITH FOX HOSTS -- ‘It has to do with having insurance, man’: Sen. Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, tussled with “Fox and Friends” yesterday morning after they sprang a video clip of Jonathan Gruber talking about voter ignorance and the Affordable Care Act. The hosts piled on King when he talked about how having insurance saved his life from cancer (“What does that have to do with it?”) and King shot back that it seemed the Fox hosts preferred to keep people off insurance (“Are you that cruel?”). Mediaite’s got the video and the transcript:
Poor aggrieved Angus. Notice how the emphasis of the story is not about Gruber's Obamacare deceptions barely touched upon but about how dare the Fox folks confront King with the lies perpetrated in order to get that bill passed.
Anyway I am provisionally awarding the bonus points to Politico for spin creativity on the Gruber video but I am still awaiting the spin control from New Republic editor Jonathan Cohn. He has a high Politico hurdle to surpass but I have confidence in him. You can do it, Jonathan!
