Words Taken Out Of Context

What a fiasco in the United States. A government employee with a rather prestigious job makes a speech which is filmed. Some idiot decides to make his own video of the speech but cuts out some important sections. He then displays his creation on the internet where the lady's words appear to show she is racist, but remember that not all of her speech has been included by the idiot.

Her boss is notified of the seemingly racist video and promptly fires this, as it turns out, innocent employee. Her boss, also an idiot, took the video at face value and neglected to do any further research on the matter.

The very nice, and non-racist, employee's case was then taken up by the media who found out the TRUE story. They took the time, unlike her employer, to watch the entire speech that she had given and presented her case to the public. Red faced government officials apologized and offered her a lovely new job in Washington.

Idiot number 1 was interviewed and whined that he only did a little tweaking of the film before airing it and his intention was not to get the woman fired. Then why would he "tweak" the film to make this woman appear to be a racist by cutting out the parts of the speech that proved she wasn't?

I hate the thought of having to carefully pick my words so I won't be misunderstood but, if someone really wants to smear you, they can twist whatever you say to their advantage. So much trouble can be caused by mean spirited people who seem to get their jollies by hurting others in this passive/aggressive way. When caught out, these idiots will look in wide eyed innocence and claim they never meant any harm. But they did. They just didn't expect to get caught doing it.

It isn't always politicians or celebrities who are targeted. Sometimes it's an every day person who has inadvertently made some idiot jealous and, if that someone is petty and mean spirited, they just might do some truth twisting.

We've all had this happen to us at one time or another but, if we were lucky, the truth came out and the idiot was shown up for the nasty person they were. I wish good always won out over evil but that isn't always the case. Sometimes lives are ruined or changed forever, based on words or actions taken out of context. I'm glad the truth won this time.

Where would we be without a free and honorable press?