Hours after President Obama left ground zero yesterday, ABC News’ Jake Tapper tweeted a photo of an American flag being removed from a building there. “One minute to air and they decided to take the flag down from the live shot!” he wrote, referring to the live shot he was about to do for a news segment. Upon discovering this, conservative bloggers quickly descended into fits of hysteria, because they assumed that Tapper had meant the flag was taken down earlier in the day right before Obama had gotten there. Michelle Malkin asked, “Does flying the American flag at Ground Zero now constitute “spiking the football???” Another blogger, Doug Ross, went further off the deep end:
This administration and, by extension, the Democrat Party are now so thoroughly divorced from the history, traditions and morals of America that we might as well admit the Marxist left has executed a successful coup d’état on this Republic.
Only later did they come to understand the real context of Tapper’s photo, at which point Malkin and Ross both apologized, which is nice of them. Everyone makes mistakes, but this mistake illustrates the mind-set of some of the people who despise Obama with every fiber of their body. Even conspiracy theories that would appear entirely illogical to everyone else — like the American president ordering the American flag removed from ground zero — are readily embraced because they conform to a warped view of Obama’s patriotism.
No, President Obama Didn’t Have A Flag Removed From Ground Zero [County Fair/Media Matters]
