It's Becoming Clearer; The REAL Story Behind Obama's Capitol Crime Quote!

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One morning last week I woke up to MSNBC's Morning Joe as I often do to hear Joe, Mikka and some others talking about the awful thing Barack Obama had said the night before in the Capitol while speaking to the Democratic Caucus in the House. Something to the effect that "I have become a symbol...ya-da-ya-da...", I'm sure you've all heard or read about it. There was no recording made, shockingly in today's age of You-Tube, no video or audio of the offensive words so everyone really jumped on it and Obama. How arrogant! How elitist! And so it went on, discussions were started here about the subject. Later that same day I heard several people who had been there tell a totally different story but when I did searches on it online I was unable to find anything with the whole quote so I passed on responding to any posts here since I didn't have anything to back up the fact that Obama had been taken out of context. As it turns out Obama was trying to deflect attention from himself not boast of his importance or whatever many thought he was trying to boast about. Somehow, "It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign -- that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol," became, according to Dana Milbank, "I have become a symbol of the possibility of America." http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/07/30/house_aides_push_back_on_obama.html Tonight on MSNBC's Countdown I was a bit confused at first when, Keith Olbermann's "Best Persons" segments included the following: Best Timing: Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, who notified us today that after four years appearing with us, he had accepted another television offer. This saved your crack Countdown staff an increasingly difficult decision. For nearly a week we'd been waiting for him to offer a correction or an explanation for his column from last week in which he apparently reported an Obama quote without a full context turned the meaning of the quote inside-out. Then he called criticisms of his column "whines" even though the dispute was over whether Obama said the self-deprecating: "It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign -- that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions" -- or only the part about "I have just become a symbol..." We had decided not to have Dana on this news-hour again until this was cleared up, and, sadly after some very happy years, he's apparently chosen to make that cloud permanent. Good luck, Dana. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/4/174920/2691/934/562486 Keith explains in the above article that he had intended for Milbanks' regular appearances on Countdown to become less frequent unless or until this matter was cleared up. As it turned out that was all academic since Milbanks has already made his first regular appearance on CNN. What are your thoughts? Were you even aware of the full text of Obama's comments that were so criticized and mocked? Do you think Dana Milbanks should apologize to not only Obama and his campaign but to his readers as well as everyone else who got this "news" secondhand and deserved the truth but got something much less than that? Annie