You mean he grew up privileged in Kenya?

Yes, very privileged, except that Barack Obama actually grew up as a middle class (at best) black kid in 1960s America to a single mom who had to rely on her mother because Obama’s dad deserted them at an early age. Other than that, yeah real privileged.

There is one serious error in this National Journal story by Rebecca Kaplan. She claims, wrongly, that President Obama said that “Americans” are lazy. No he did not say that. The President was talking about past administrations, the US government, being lazy by not sufficiently selling America to foreign investors, and he explained how his administration was trying to turn that around. Does National Journal really think the President set up “SelectUSA” to help the American people overcome their laziness? (What, is SelectUSA giving out free Red Bulls?) Seriously?

That’s one hell of a difference. In fact, National Journal is repeating, and validating, the GOP lie that underlies the entire story she’s writing. Hopefully someone at National Journal will catch this, but more importantly, the media needs to be a better job on this story. MSNBC did something similar – they quoted Romney falsely accusing Obama of saying Americans are lazy, then MSNBC simply quoted the President, without noting that Romney was wrong. If you didn’t read carefully you wouldn’t know that Romney lied, that the President did not say that Americans are lazy.

Come on folks. We’re not asking you to lie. We’re asking you, when you know something is patently false on its face, to say it. Don’t hint at it by putting Obama’s quote and hoping that the reader will get it. Say it. Or at the very least admit that the President’s words were ambiguous and that it’s not at all clear who he was referring to. But you can’t read that quote and say for sure that he meant the American people.