Petty hypocrisy works

As long as you have the press in your pocket. 

So this:

OK, she misspoke.  In a sane world, it's funny.  But as usual, outlets like the above leftwing rag use it to tar her as an idiot.  That way they can avoid the substance of her point. 

As one who spent a good part of my adult life in a fishbowl, where regular public speaking was part of the gig, I sympathize.  Try as you might, you'll eventually botch things.  More than once I misspoke or said something in a way I regretted. 

On the other hand, sometimes it was pettiness on the part of the listeners.  I remember once a fellow in our congregation emailed me after the morning services.  He was a bit shocked and disappointed that I split an infinitive in my sermon. I kid you not.  I wanted to respond and ask if he bothered to pay attention to anything else in the sermon, like the point of the message.  But I smiled and went on with life. 

So my sympathies are usually for those doing the speaking - Democrat, Republican, Druid or otherwise.  Nonetheless, it's not hard to see the naked hypocrisy, pettiness and lunacy that often accompanies the Left in exploiting such things.  

I remember in my younger years during the 1992 presidential campaign. We called it the great Potato Crisis.  Others called it Potatogate.  That's when VP Dan Quayle misspelled the word potato during an elementary school spelling bee.  For weeks it was hammered on by comedians, in the press, among pundits.  This was before the Internet or Cable News or Talk Radio had truly taken off.  I remember many I knew, Democrat and Republican, said let it die. Yet you'd think Quayle had declared the world to be flat. 

So I sympathize with the odd mistake, and typically don't exploit it for anything other than a chuckle.  Unless, of course, there appears to be something underneath suggesting an inner motive not intended to be revealed.  I also don't go crazy when it's clear that someone has misspoken (for instance, I knew President Obama knows how many states there are in the Union).  Otherwise making more of it than it is comes off as petty, childish, and more an indictment on those trying to make a mountain out of a molehill than the gaffe maker in question. 

BTW, as if to illustrate the press's help in the childish hypocrisy, behold a sampling of the results from Googling 'M. Greene' when this story broke: