Anatomy of a comment
Since Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker rose in late winter to the top of some polls for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, Democrats and media members have been busy trying to knock him off his perch. The most recent occasion came when he was defending his state’s mandatory ultrasound law on TheBlazeTV and proved a good example of how one media outlet’s misquote can cause a firestorm.
“We just knew if we signed the law, if we provided the information,” he said of the ultrasound measure, which pro-abortion groups decry, “that more people if they saw that unborn child would … make a decision to protect and keep the life of that unborn child.”
Later, discussing the wonder of the ultrasound machine, Walker said how he and his wife still have the first ultrasound pictures of their 19- and 20-year-old sons. “It’s just a cool thing out there,” he said.
Politico picked up the “cool” comment and wrote how “Scott Walker defends mandatory ultrasounds: ‘It’s just a cool thing out there’.” Salon’s headline was “Scott Walker: Women should be forced to have transvaginal ultrasounds because they are ‘a cool thing’.” Other left-wing websites followed suit, and Planned Parenthood chimed in with a misquoted Tweet.