Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Deny deny deny deny...umm...yeah, I did it...but I didn't mean it

The latest winner of the Michelle Bachmann Memorial "Political Jackass" award is...the distinguished gentleman from North Carolina, Representative Robin Hayes!

In the spirit of comity, brotherhood, and bipartisanship, this charmer warmed up a campaign rally crowd prior to John McCain's arrival first by repeating McCain's claim that Obama is conducting "class warfare" followed by his own heartwarming declaration: "Liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God."

Almost instantly (and in the world of social media like Twitter, that's not much of an exaggeration), reporters filed stories about it. And instantly thereafter, the denials flew fast and heavy followed by the requisite attack on the media ("irresponsible journalism" said a Hayes spokesperson). And of course, a short time later, the audio of Representative Hayes inserting both of his size 11 Florsheims into his mouth hit the Internet, followed not too much later by this perennial favorite from Mr. Hayes: "There is no doubt that it came out completely the wrong way. I actually was trying to work to keep the crowd as respectful as possible, so this is definitely not what I intended."

When are politicians and celebrities going to remember that a) they should always assume there's a camera or microphone near them when they're in public and b) that they're always going to look even more idiotic following repeated denials when the tape proving they said or did something inevitably makes it appearance?

Read The Politico's series of updates as the denials flew and listen to the audio here.

And read about the "oops, I guess I did say it" moment here.

No comments: