Pastor A

By Dan Gainor    Published September 26, 2012

President Obama spoke  to the UN Tuesday, but what he had to say depended on the media outlet reporting  it. It was about “optics” according to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow; “free speech” said  CBS’s Nancy Cordes and Iran, explained NBC’s Chuck Todd.

Not that they’re wrong. It was a 4,000-word speech. Obama covered a lot of  ground. But the ground the major media covered conveniently left out what was the  most provocative line of the entire speech.

The president told the UN that the “future must not belong” to a series of  people including “corrupt” leaders and those who “bully women.” But one line  from that list stood out. “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

That line appeared almost nowhere in the old media where Obama’s supposed  defense of free speech dominated. The broadcast networks ignored it and only  Jake Tapper noted that Team Obama had also tried to get the video pulled from  YouTube for violation of “terms of use.” The New York Times skipped the line,  ironically in an article headlined: “Obama Tells U.N. New Democracies Need Free  Speech.”

If you wanted a clear indication that few news outlets are even  aware conservatives exist, this was it. Conservative sites descended on  the comment like a flock of, well, journalists. Red State, Hot Air, Twitchy,  Breitbart and National Review all felt it noteworthy to cover. Even the hypey site  Mediaite wrote about it and called it “Obama’s tragic pander.”

Ben Shapiro  of Breitbart said Obama’s comments were “precisely the opposite of what the  Founders would have intended.” “Those who ‘slander the prophet of Islam’ are  people exercising their right to free speech,” he continued. Red State’s Erick Erickson explained  that orthodox Christians don’t believe Muhammad is a prophet. “Actual  Christians, as opposed to many of the supposed Christians put up by the  mainstream media, believe that Christ is the only way to salvation. Believing  that is slandering Muhammad.”

Over at Hot Air, Erika Johnsen  reminded readers that the Mideast unrest is not about the video. “[I]f we  believe that all people have a right to express their views, even ones with  which we disagree, why are we still talking about this dumb video?” she asked.  The website Twitchy reminded readers that Obama himself had told “The View” to “the best way to marginalize” the video was to “ignore” it. “Yet he mentioned it  a half a dozen times during his UN address,” Twitchy said.