Was the Associated Press transcription of Obama’s CBC speech ‘racist’?

Was the Associated Press transcription of Obama’s CBC speech ‘racist’?

To answer this headline succinctly, no. I'm a bit of a journalist myself, or used to be, and I know well that you clean up things like people leaving off their "g's." But in this case, I think it was the point of the speech.

You'll notice in the rest of the quote from the AP, he didn't leave off the "g's," he only did it on the three specific words.

Just like I felt it was unfair to clean up George W. Bush's grammatical mistakes -- which are different than saying "gonna" rather than "going to" -- I feel like this tells part of the story.

From a journalistic standpoint, I think it is much ado about nothing. And this comes from someone who thinks latent racism is very dangerous.

I like people in the abstract

This blog entry by Paul Krugman is, as usual, spot on. But the key for me was seeing him put voice to a conservative "value" that I've only come recently to appreciate.