Joseph Williams at Politico wrote that "shortly before his death, conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart claimed he was working on a project involving potentially explosive video of Obama as a college student which he hinted would show the president has a history of favoring African Americans over whites.
On Wednesday, BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski released the video, which dates from 1991, and it instantly went viral among political bloggers and reporters on the Internet, garnering a story on the Huffington Post which reports, "If this is indeed the footage in question, it's not particularly controversial."
The supposedly “racially themed” video of President Barack Obama as a 29-year-old Harvard law student that’s gone viral on the Web was broadcast as part of a PBS documentary on the future president nearly four years ago.
On the eve of the groundbreaking 2008 presidential election, the Boston-based documentary program “Frontline” broadcast a program on Obama titled, “The Choice,” which featured a version of the same video (both versions below).
Obama is introducing (the late) Derrick Bell, Harvard’s first African American tenured law professor, at a rally in solidarity with Bell and support of affirmative action in the law school’s admissions process. The video was part of an extended broadcast tracing Obama’s path from childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia to his election as the nation’s first black president.
The speech is part of the chapter on Obama’s law school years, in which he becomes the first African American student elected editor and president of the Harvard Law Review.
In the video, Obama is shown praising Bell, while the professor stands nearby and a crowd cheers. Obama recalls how Bell spoke at an orientation for first-year students, and instead of lecturing the students, encouraged conversation.
Obama had sided with Bell in his fight to expand diversity on the Harvard Law campus — calling him "the Rosa Parks of legal education." Stylistically, Obama himself hasn't changed much — striking the same cadences, rhythms and themes as a 29-year old law student that would eventually propel him to the presidency.
Breitbart.com editors Joel Pollak and Ben Shapiro were scheduled to appeared on Fox News' Hannity Show Wednesday night to air what they say is another version of the same footage (posted below)
Big Government, a conservative website founded by Andrew Breitbart, is claiming that the video released by BuzzFeed is selectively edited, and promises more video to come shortly. BuzzFeed denied editing the video, and said the site published the video they purchased from WGBH – the Boston-based PBS station which produces “Frontline” – shows the speech in its entirety.
I watched both videos. The first video below was edited, but it was only taken out of the 2nd unedited video below where Obama actually speaks. Otherwise, they are both exactly the same. No part of Obama's speech was edited at all, despite what Fox News might tell you.
It was all a lot of hype for nothing - - except for web traffic to the late Breitbart's web site and TV ratings for a desperate Fox News.
The full unedited video below: Obama speaks from approximately 6:30 into the video to 7:40 in this 17:00 minute video.
The entire program is available for viewing on Frontline’s web site.
A blogger named Brad Friedman also posted this and named his post EXPOSED!: Video of Radical Student Obama Protesting at Harvard in 1991 Finally Surfaces! When I first watched the video, I wondered, what exactly was supposedly "exposed"?
The blogger also wrote that Andrew Breitbart " was obviously murdered in order to keep the disturbing truth about Obama's radical past from seeing the light of day!"
It was only then that I had realized he was being totally sarcastic. Silly me, the laugh was on me.
No comments:
Post a Comment