Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Oval Office Carpet Contains a Misquote

The Oval Office recently got a major makeover. One of the features was the newly installed carpet had five quotes 'of meaning' to Obama. The problem is that one of the quotes is improperly attributed. The administration should have known about it not just from the extensive research that should have gone on before committing to them, but because Obama had misattributed the quote before and were told about the problem then.

http://hotair.com/archives/2010/09/01/obamateurism-of-the-day-348

"The new rug also has a new feature, promoted by the White House to the media, of inspirational quotes on its circumference from great Americans like Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. At least we hope they are, because the President still hasn’t figured out the correct origin of one of the quotes included in that carpet:


The quotes — described as being “of meaning” to and selected by President Obama — are:


“The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt


“The Arc of the Moral Universe is Long, But it Bends Towards Justice” – Martin Luther King, Jr.



“Government of the People, By the People, For the People” – President Abraham Lincoln


“No Problem of Human Destiny is Beyond Human Beings” – President John F. Kennedy


“The Welfare of Each of Us is Dependent Fundamentally Upon the Welfare of All of Us” – President Theodore Roosevelt


Martin Luther King did say what the White House attributes to him, but it wasn’t original to King, and King never claimed it was.  King quoted 19th-century Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, who wrote it in 1853.  As I noted in June 2009, Reverend Matt Tittle tried to inform the Obama campaign in April 2008 that they had misattributed the quote, but they never acknowledged his queries.



It’s one thing to misattribute a quote in a speech, and a little worse to ignore people who attempt to correct the mistake.  It’s another thing entirely to have the misattribution written into the carpet of the Oval Office, and to have the White House continue to issue misinformation and shortchange the original author of the phrase."

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