Apparently the media civility police have become so sensitive to any slight of President Obama that MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell actually invented one such controversy out of thin air during her 1 p.m. ET hour show on Thursday. [Audio available here]
Speaking to Obama advisor Melody Barnes, Mitchell declared: "John Boehner today just slammed the President and said, you know, that the American people shouldn't be forced to watch some politician they don't want to listen to and frankly, most of them would rather watch a football game. Is that disrespectful?"
In reality, Mitchell took Boehner's comments completely out of context, something she admitted later in the hour: "And just to make a quick correction here. Our apologies to Speaker Boehner, who was speaking, apparently, about Republicans not giving an official response to the President tonight when he said that Americans would rather be watching football."
On Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry asked MSNBC Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough if three Republican members of Congress not being present during Obama's address to Congress were being "disrespectful" to the President.
Last Friday, MSNBC's Martin Bashir interviewed one of those Republicans, Congressman Joe Walsh, and demanded: "I am asking you, are you able to be as disrespectful to the office of president by simply walking away from something that every member of the Congress is going to attend? Is that also because he's black?"
