Buzzfeed

Buzzfeed - Democrats/Leftists - Ethics - Gawker - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - Progressives - Warner Todd Huston

Gawker Memo: Don’t Write like BuzzFeed

April 7, 2014 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Gawker thinks quite highly of itself, it appears. So high, in fact, that employees have now been told not to write like those ne’er do wells over at BuzzFeed.

“We want to sound like regular adult human beings, not Buzzfeed writers or Reddit commenters,” new Gawker Editor Max Read told employees of the website famed for its name calling and taunt-filled blog posts.

The editor of the blog that says it is “the source for daily Manhattan media news and gossip,” sent out the memo to employees on April 1 informing them that henceforth Internet slang was banned. No more “derps,” not another “epic,” not one more “pwn,” and most certainly no “massives” will be allowed.

Read is telling employees to avoid using type with a strike through in posts, too, informing them that if they have a correction to make they should actually write the thing out and note that it is a correction.

So old world.
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Gawker Memo: Don’t Write like BuzzFeed”

Business - Buzzfeed - Copyright - Courts - Democrats/Leftists - Ethics - Liberals - Progressives - Warner Todd Huston

Buzzfeed Sued Over Unauthorized Use of Photo

June 23, 2013 by 1 Comment

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is one of the dangers of the Internet age and Buzzfeed is only the latest website to find itself being taken to court, sued for $3.67 million for using a photograph without the permission of the original owner of the image.

While perusing the Internet, photographer Kai Eiselein stumbled across one of Buzzfeed’s ubiquitous photo essay lists, one titled “The 30 Funniest Header Faces.” The entry from 2010 gathered 30 images of soccer players caught by the camera lens making funny faces while butting heads against a soccer ball.

Eiselein was perturbed, though, to find one of his own photographs featured as one of the 30 amusing images Buzzfeed used. The photog was perturbed because he had uploaded the image to his Flickr feed and taken the time to note on all his images that his photos were “All Rights Reserved” in an effort to keep people from stealing them. As it happens, Buzzfeed simply took the image and never contacted Eiselein for permission to use the image.

Eiselein sent Buzzfeed a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedown notice and the site quickly acceded to his demand. So, upon visiting the Buzzfeed page in question now, visitors are greeted with “The 29 Funniest Header Faces.”
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Buzzfeed Sued Over Unauthorized Use of Photo”

ABC - Al-Jazeera - Associated Press - Barack Obama - Buzzfeed - CBS - CNN - Democrats/Leftists - Ethics - Fox News - Huffington Post - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - MSNBC - NBC - News - NPR - Politico - President - Progressives - Reuters - The Atlantic - The New York Times - TV - TV News - Warner Todd Huston

Conan O’Brien Slams Republicans, Democrats, the Press at WHCD

April 28, 2013 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Typical of when a Democrat is president, during a keynote monologue at the White House Correspondents Dinner (WHCD), the President is spared from too many mean spirited barbs. In keeping with that tradition, TBS’ Conan O’Brien poked a lot of fun at Republicans and conservatives with a bit sharper stick than he used to poke Democrats.

This year’s WHCD started with a slew of media outlets discussing the now annual slam on the event as delivered by long-time Washington reporter Tom Brokaw. The semi-retired NBC anchor has lamented for some time that the whole party atmosphere, replete with musicians and Hollywood celebrities–fittingly, this year the Duck Dynasty folks attended–makes a mockery of the seriousness of the media’s work.

After the President delivered his spiel on Saturday night, late night comedian Conan O’Brien took the stage to deliver the keynote address.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans showed up early as the comedian’s targets and naturally, even though he hasn’t been in office for over four years, now, an obligatory slam of George W. Bush as “stupid” had to be delivered.

Near the top of his address Conan mentioned the opening of the George W. Bush Presidential Library joking that the library had “Millions of books, articles and documents and if you go you can be the first to read them.”
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Conan O’Brien Slams Republicans, Democrats, the Press at WHCD”

Anti-Americanism - Buzzfeed - Democrats/Leftists - Ethics - GOP - John Boehner - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - Progressives - Republicans - Warner Todd Huston

Bensmithing GOP Minority Outreach

January 20, 2013 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The GOP-as-racists narrative continues on Buzzfeed with a piece today focused on the minority outreach being planned by National Republican Campaign Committee Chairman Greg Walden.

Reporting for Buzzfeed on Walden’s appearance at a recent GOP retreat, John Stanton reports only on Walden’s comments about new plans to get more minority candidates and to try and appeal more to minority voters.

But any look at the GOP National Convention last year would have revealed any number of minority candidates. Indeed, one of the most talked about new Senators is Florida’s Marco Rubio.

Rubio was joined by Texas colleague Ted Cruz this year, as well. Not to mention South Carolina’s Tim Scott.
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Bensmithing GOP Minority Outreach”

Business - Buzzfeed - Cable - Capitalism - Democrats/Leftists - Entertainment - Fox News - Government - Journalism - Liberals - Media - MSNBC - Progressives - TV - Warner Todd Huston

Subjective ‘News’: Buzzfeed Says ‘Fox News Bench is Weak’

December 20, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a classic example of substituting opinion for facts, Buzzfeed reported that MSNBC’s recent ratings should “make Fox News nervous.” It seems the main reason Fox should be nervous is because its featured stars and its back bench correspondents are “weak” according to Buzzfeed Politics.

For Buzzfeed, Dorsey Shaw writes that MSNBC has begun to climb the ratings ladder becoming second to Fox News and ahead of CNN in the cable race. But Shaw also notes that for the first time ever a couple of the far left-wing cabler’s shows beat Fox in the ratings game.

MSNBC’s back-to-back prime-time opinion shows, The Rachel Maddow Show and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, topped both Fox News and CNN for the coveted 25–54 demographic during the week of Dec. 3. That gives Phil Griffin’s network the number one ranking in the demo for four of the first five weeks since the presidential election. Adding to the impressive numbers is the fact that the MSNBC shows outperformed their Fox counterparts despite having guest hosts fill in for Maddow Dec. 5 through Dec. 7.

Dorsey properly reports that Fox still dominates Prime Time ratings but goes on to needle Fox for a three-year-old press release that touts its own ratings success — what that has to do with anything is anybody’s guess.
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Subjective ‘News’: Buzzfeed Says ‘Fox News Bench is Weak’”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Buzzfeed - Democrats/Leftists - Ethics - Government - Journalism - Liberals - Libya - Media - Media Bias - President - Progressives - Warner Todd Huston

Buzzfeed: With Rice Out, Benghazi Scandal Now Over?

December 15, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice came before the American people and served up the untrue story that the attacks on our embassy in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans was the result of some Youtube video. This false story seems to have helped torpedo her chances of being the next Secretary of State as today Rice pulled her name out of the running for the position. But, does her pulling her name from consideration somehow “end” the Benghazi scandal? Buzzfeed thinks it does.

According to Buzzfeed’s Zeke Miller, Rice pulling herself out of contention for the nomination as Obama’s next Secretary of State “effectively caps a three-month administration scandal over the Benghazi terrorist attack.”

Miller goes on to say that because the Republicans found “the scalp they’ve been seeking,” why, the whole thing is basically over.

Over? So, all the lies, the deaths, the lack of support for our embassy and support personnel that were killed is now all erased simply because Rice quit her hunt for Sec. State and the GOP “got a scalp”?

Miller does note that Republicans are vowing to continue the investigation into the major failures at Benghazi, but he feels that it will now continue “without the bloodthirst.”

Of course, Miller is viewing the Benghazi massacre that Americans suffered as merely some political witch-hunt as all Democrats do. This is little else but an effort to give Obama a pass on his disastrous foreign policy failure by dismissing the whole Benghazi affair as nothing but mere politics.
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Buzzfeed: With Rice Out, Benghazi Scandal Now Over?”

Buzzfeed - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Ethics - GOP - Government - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - Mitt Romney - Mormons - Progressives - Religion - Warner Todd Huston

Buzz Feed Reporter Reveals Anti-Mormon Bigotry of Press Corps

November 16, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

McKay Coppins of Buzzfeed was one of the reporters in the Romney press pool during his late campaign for president. He is also a Mormon. In a long piece posted on November 14, Coppins reveals the stark anti-Mormon bigotry that his fellow members of the media openly displayed as they followed team Romney around the country.

Coppins’ report offers several interesting bits of information and even makes Mitt out to be the John Kennedy of Mormonism in that, like Kennedy, Mitt’s candidacy brought his religion out from under the shadows of suspicion and into the mainstream.

But the piece begins revealing the stark and totally casual anti-Mormon bigotry of his fellow members of the Old Media establishment.

In his first several paragraphs Coppins reveals that the other reporters following Romney constantly sniggered about his “Mormon underwear” and often made jokes about his religion when in the privacy of the press plane or on their many bus trips.

The jokes from his fellows made Coppins uncomfortable. At one point he noted he “slid down in his seat” and pretended to look at his phone to avoid eye contact with the guffawing media bigots surrounding him.
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Buzz Feed Reporter Reveals Anti-Mormon Bigotry of Press Corps”

Anti-Americanism - Barack Obama - Buzzfeed - Civil War - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Ethics - GOP - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - Mitt Romney - President - Progressives - Race - Slavery - Warner Todd Huston

Buzzfeed: Hey, Romney Drove Past a Confederate Flag, He Must be a Racist

October 9, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Before we get any further into this story, I have to warn you that this is not satire. That having been said, Buzzfeed’s Zeke Miller perpetrated one of the worst attempts at guilt by association ever made. Miller attempted to intimate that Mitt Romney is a racist because his motorcade drove past private property that had a Confederate flag flying on it as he campaigned in Virginia.

You read that right. All Romney did was sit in a car that drove past a Confederate flag and that was something that Miller thought was “news.”

Miller made this trenchant observation on his Twitter feed on October 5.

Romney motorcade just passed a hill flying a large confederate flag in rural SW VA

Wow. Imagine, driving past a Confederate flag in a state that makes millions in tourist money off its intimate connection to American history! Imagine the sheer luck of finding a Confederate flag flying in the one state most associated with the Civil War! Why, the absolute craziness of finding a Confederate flag flying in the state that hosted the Capitol of the Confederate States of America!

What are the chances?
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Buzzfeed: Hey, Romney Drove Past a Confederate Flag, He Must be a Racist”

Barack Obama - Buzzfeed - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Ethics - Government - Journalism - Liberals - Media Bias - Paul Ryan - President - Warner Todd Huston

Buzzfeed Buries Story of Obama Supporter Punching Romney/Ryan Volunteer

August 15, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Now, if you had a story about GOP veep candidate Paul Ryan’s first Iowa rally and an Obama supporter rushed the stage after punching a Romney/Ryan volunteer, would your headline read, “Ryan Heckled At First Solo Event“? Or would you maybe want to rather highlight the whole punching thing?

Well, to Buzzfeed’s Zeke Miller “heckling” is far more newsworthy than punching, I guess. In fact, it was so low on the list of important points that Buzzfeed threw it away a few paragraphs into the story, with a lone line, effectively giving it little notice.

It seems that some wild-eyed, violent Obama supporter rushed onto the stage upon which Ryan was speaking on August 13 and was snared by the police who were on hand as security. As she charged the stage, police are reported as having yelled, “She just punched a volunteer.”

One might think that an Obama supporter violent enough to punch people on the way to rushing the stage where an opponent of the President is speaking would be the focused aspect of this story of Ryan’s fist visit to Iowa. But, no, the headline goes for “hecklers” instead.
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Buzzfeed Buries Story of Obama Supporter Punching Romney/Ryan Volunteer”

Barack Obama - Buzzfeed - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Ethics - GOP - House of Representatives - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - Mitt Romney - Paul Ryan - President - Republicans - Warner Todd Huston

Buzzfeed Using Anonymous Source to Slam Paul Ryan as a ‘Sarah Palin’ Pick

August 11, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Plainly the long knives are out among the left-media already. All media hands have been called to rush out to cut Rep. Paul Ryan to pieces before he sets one foot on the campaign trail. For Buzzfeed they’ve stooped to using unnamed “sources” to attack Ryan, calling him “no Sarah Palin.” But it’s a strawman argument pushing the left’s narrative.

This Buzzfeed smear job is clearly an effort to both try and influence conservatives that love Palin to turn against Paul Ryan by invoking Palin’s name and to push the false narrative that Ryan’s pick is a “controversial” pick, one meant to shore up Romney’s “flailing campaign.” Buzzfeed is attempting to turn conservatives both against each other and against Paul Ryan.

For Buzzfeed, McKay Coppins writes that Romney’s pick is somehow “just like” McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin.
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Buzzfeed Using Anonymous Source to Slam Paul Ryan as a ‘Sarah Palin’ Pick”

Barack Obama - Buzzfeed - Campaign Finance - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Ethics - Government - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - Warner Todd Huston

Buzzfeed Furthers Myth of Obama’s Small Donor Dominance

August 8, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Ben Smith of Buzzfeed recently wrote about campaign donations — both Romney’s and Obama’s — for this presidential election. In an otherwise fairly informative piece, Smith feeds into one of the myths about the 2008 election, the claim that Obama’s small donor base was bigger by far than that of any other candidate in history.

Smith begins his campaign finance piece with his first paragraph touting Obama’s “perfection” of “small-dollar politics.”

The 2008 election marked the perfection of small-dollar politics, as Barack Obama fueled roughly half of his campaign with the email-driven, impulse-based solicitation that had been pioneered by Howard Dean four years earlier and technically perfected by smaller campaigns and advocacy groups.

It has been said repeatedly that Obama’s 2008 election campaign brought in more small donors of $200 or less than any other candidate, however this is not true. In fact, even the George Soros-funded Campaign Finance Institute says that this claim that Obama had more small donors than any other candidate is false.

In 2008 the CFI found that Obama had just about the same small donor record as George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign. The study found that Bush’s total campaign donations broke down to 25% from small donors. Obama’s 2008 take was 26% small donors. No real statistical difference, there.

“The myth is that money from small donors dominated Barack Obama’s finances. The reality of Obama’s fundraising was impressive, but the reality does not match the myth,” said CFI’s executive director Michael Malbin.
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Buzzfeed Furthers Myth of Obama’s Small Donor Dominance”

Anti-Americanism - Budget - Business - Buzzfeed - Capitalism - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Earmarks - Ethics - Government - Jobs - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - Regulation - Republicans - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Buzzfeed Misleads on Job Loss of U.S. Merchant Marine, Blames Tea Party

July 15, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Now that Congress passed and the President signed the highway bill, Buzzfeed has jumped in to decry the loss of as many as 10,000 jobs in the U.S. overseas shipping sector. Naturally, since it’s Buzzfeed we’re talking about here, only the left side of the story is being told. Worse, Buzzfeed tries to pin this “job loss” on the Tea Party — as if millions of Tea Partiers nation wide are dead set on causing job loss to our Merchant Marines.

For Buzzfeed, former The Hill employee John Stanton seems to have simply rejiggered a Democrat Party press release to cry about the “jobs loss” he and the left think they see in the Highway bill. He spends no time at all worrying about any Republican response, quotes only Democrats, and also seems to be just regurgitating press releases from lobbyists for the Merchant Marine. Of course, there really isn’t any explanation of what really happened.

One of the claimed “unexpected” results of the highway bill, Stanton tells us, was the reduction in federal funding of the shipping by sea of foreign food aid. Until this bill, 75% of this food aid was shipped aboard American ships. The new bill cuts that to 50% for a savings of some $108 million a year in taxpayer’s funds.

This, Buzzfeed says, is a result of those darn Tea Partiers being so staunchly against earmarks.
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Buzzfeed Misleads on Job Loss of U.S. Merchant Marine, Blames Tea Party”

Barack Obama - Buzzfeed - Democrats/Leftists - Ethics - Government - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - President - TV - Warner Todd Huston

Buzzfeed’s Hastings Slams Dinesh D’Souza as ‘A Hack’

July 14, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Apparently Buzzfeed’s Michael Hastings has trouble understanding the discourse of the deeper philosophical concepts in which author Dinesh D’Souza has engaged over the years and, like many people that don’t understand something, he just waves off D’Souza’s work as “loony tunes” stuff.

On a recent appearance on the little seen Current TV show The Young Turks with host Cenk Uygur, Hastings attacked best selling author D’Souza as a “hack” writer, one that “lives in a fantasy world” based on his various books on such high concepts as the existence of life after death and how the cultural left bears some responsibility for the attacks on Sept. 11. Hastings so ridiculously and childishly over simplified D’Souza’s points that one might wonder who is the real hack, D’Souza or Hastings?

Hastings slammed D’Souza for not only being a graduate of Dartmouth, but for being crazy enough to believe in religion and for thinking that the cultural left might be a bad influence in the U.S. (Transcript below)
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Buzzfeed’s Hastings Slams Dinesh D’Souza as ‘A Hack’”

Buzzfeed - Democrats/Leftists - Ethics - Gay Marriage - Gays - Government - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - Warner Todd Huston

Twitterings: Buzzfeed’s Hastings Calls ‘Neocons’ Gay

July 12, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

The journalist Buzzfeed assigned to cover Barack Obama for this campaign season, Michael Hastings, recently took to his Twitter account to claim that “neocons” are gay. I guess accusing people of being homosexual is what passes for serious journalism these days.

Hastings was responding to a Tweet by Richard Grenell, who was taunting the Buzzfeed journo. You may recall that Grenell is an openly gay Republican who served in the George W. Bush administration and for a time was on Mitt Romney’s advisory team.

In his Tweet, Grenell said, “Aren’t u covering Obama for BuzzFeed? Put your big boy pants on & get to work. MT @mmhastings: a “duck call” for trolls.”

In reply, Hastings went for the very name calling tactic that liberals say should never be used: he called Grenell and “neocons” gay.

@RichardGrenell ric, your tweets often appear to reveal insecurities about your own masculinity. is that a neocon thing?

Hastings’ Tweet has caused eyebrows to raise.

Also on Twitter, Stephen Gutowski then asked Buzzfeed’s chief, Ben Smith, for his reaction to this outrageous Tweet made by his “reporter.”

It seems that Ben Smith just blew it off as a joke.
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Twitterings: Buzzfeed’s Hastings Calls ‘Neocons’ Gay”

Barack Obama - Business - Buzzfeed - Capitalism - Democrats/Leftists - Elections - Ethics - Government - Jobs - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - Mitt Romney - President - Taxes - Warner Todd Huston

Buzzfeed’s Most Dishonest Headline Attacking Romney

July 10, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Buzzfeed sure seems to be just another arm of the Obama re-election campaign with a piece today attacking Romney over Bain outsourcing… even though Romney did not work at Bain when the outsourcing happened.

One of Obama’s most cynical campaign tactics of late has been to try and link GOP candidate Mitt Romney to jobs outsourcing that the company he once worked for undertook after the candidate left the company. Buzzfeed is simply following the Obama game plan by aiding the President with these outright lies.

Today the popular site posted a misleading headline about Bain outsourcing, illicitly linked that outsourcing to Romney, then buried the truth that Romney really didn’t have anything to do with it at the bottom of the story.
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Buzzfeed’s Most Dishonest Headline Attacking Romney”

Barack Obama - Budget - Business - Buzzfeed - Capitalism - CNN - Congress - Democrats/Leftists - Economy/Finances - Government - Liberals - Media - President - Supreme Court - Taxes - The Law - Warner Todd Huston

CNN Mistakenly Reported Roberts Overturned Obamacare

June 29, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

Seven minutes of “f**king humiliation” is how one CNN staffer described the morning faux pas the “most trusted name in news” made when it reported that Chief Justice John Roberts overturned Obamacare’s mandate this morning.

As the Supreme Court of the United States was delivering its long awaited decision on Obamacare, CNN’s on-air news reader, 29-year-old Kate Bolduan, breathlessly said that the healthcare mandate was struck down. And I do mean breathlessly…

Kate Bolduan: We’re still going through the reading of the opinion, but I want to bring you the breaking news that according to producer Bill Mears, the individual mandate is not a valid, uh, not a valid exercise of the Commerce Clause. So it appears as if the Supreme Court Justices have struck down the individual mandate, the center piece of the healthcare legislation.

Not only did Miss Bolduan make CNN look bad but she also claimed that CNN’s man inside the courtroom, Bill Mears, told her this misconstruction of the facts over the phone. It doesn’t appear, though, that Mears actually said the whole thing was struck down but that young Bolduan just didn’t understand the complexities that Mears was trying to relate.
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CNN Mistakenly Reported Roberts Overturned Obamacare”

Buzzfeed - Democrats/Leftists - Ethics - GOP - Government - Journalism - Liberals - Media - Media Bias - Mitt Romney - Republicans - Warner Todd Huston

Buzz Feed Tries to Make Fun of Romney Over Telephone Photo

May 18, 2012 by

-By Warner Todd Huston

This is the kind of ignorance that you see from the left, the kind of bull crap political attack that they pretend is just “funny,” but is really just the sort of low-down lies that the left loves to indulge. In this case, Andrew Kaczynski of the website Buzz Feed tried to push a photo that he intimates shows that Mitt Romney doesn’t know how to use a land-line telephone.

Kaczynski’s caption at twitpic was, “Romney holding the landline upside down.”


Click for larger view

Now, it is obvious that Romney had picked up the phone but was talking to a person in the room, one not on the phone. Yet here is Buzz Feed trying to lead people to laugh at the out-of-touch Romney who doesn’t know how to use a telephone.

You might recall the photoshopped picture of George W. Bush supposedly using a phone upside down that was faked by the left? This photo appeared on every liberal website known to the Internet tubes. Well, Andrew Kaczynski is just trying to get that same effect but by just lying in a caption instead of going to the trouble to fake the photo entirely like liberals did in Bush’s term.

Yep, this is the sort of ignorant, political hackery that we’ve come to expect from the issues-ignoring left. They’d rather try to make up false narratives about Republicans using misleading captions on photos than talk about how bad Obama’s stewardship of this country has been.

When I first tweeted this, Kaczynski tweeted me back trying to claim that he just thought the photo was “funny.” He said, “Its just a funny photo. You don’t really think I’m implying Romney was talking on the phone backwards?”

The answer? Of course he was.
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Buzz Feed Tries to Make Fun of Romney Over Telephone Photo”