A Distortion of the Truth

I was reading The State News, Michigan State’s student newspaper, this morning and I started to read an article about John McCain in Grand Rapids.

The article was fine until this paragraph.

McCain’s opening with the economy comes just days after he said the economy was performing fine, which some critics pounced on because of recent developments such as investment bank Lehman’s Brothers filing for bankruptcy and Wall Street’s most recent nosedive. McCain later clarified his comments for earlier this week, saying what he meant by the economy doing well is that America’s workers are the best in the world.

Too bad McCain never said that. I assume The State News is referring to this quote by McCain where he didn’t say the word “well” or “performing.”

“You know that there’s been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall St. And it is-people are frightened by these events. Our economy, I think still-the fundamentals of our economy are strong. But these are very, very difficult times.”

Apparently the paraphrasing skills of the writer, Zack Colman, aren’t that great. Judging by that quote, it doesn’t appear that McCain would classify the economy as “performing well.”

–jb