The Dish

I can’t make out a thing.

Christopher Beam defends Chait.

The Kantor viral video is clearly doctored once you see the original. "Those people are shit" is still there and it’s hard to know what the referent is, but you cannot decipher in any way what Kantor says next. His defense holds up. The key point is around the 4.50 mark:

The latest twist. I don’t know. Byron York says he believes Kantor. But Pennebaker could surely clear it up by posting the original and showing how it’s been doctored and what the truth is.

Jon Rauch counts the ways. And sees McCain as an answer. Count me a little skeptical on the latter – but he sure is an improvement. And I know that’s a low bar – but we could have had Romney or Giuliani.

Larison argues that cultural shifts are moving younger generations away from conservatives.

Yesterday, I hadn’t seen the last part of this clip (see the first version here) and the latest viral video is different and longer.

Kantor is now saying that what you hear on the tape is untrue, and it’s been doctored:

"I have listened to [the video] and so have you. You can’t tell what it is I’m saying in that second sentence, you can’t decipher that."

Yes, he’s a lawyer. So the residents of Indiana are just "shit", "worthless", and "white" but not "ni**ers." But as long as he didn’t sympathetically call them "bitter," right? Kantor says he was referring to the Bush administration. The film’s director says the clip has been doctored, but he doesn’t exactly show how. Has the audio been altered? Or have the subtitles been faked? Or is it just that the remark – as muffled as it is – simply didn’t register on first viewing – and only has salience now that the Clintons are trying to win Indiana? Stay tuned. Then this:

"If you look at The War Room, this is not the way Carville or George interpreted my statement. This is frankly libelous."

Or maybe they are just used to that kind of language. Someone should ask Stephanopoulos whether he recalls that remark. I should add that this flap is still murky. Kantor seems to refer to the White House in the first clip but not in the second. The best thing would be for Pennebaker to put out what he actually directed and provide sub-titles that counter the viral video’s. If Kantor has been unfairly slimed, that should clear it up.

Spot the politician:

Q. "Do you have a TV guilty pleasure?"

A ."Grey’s Anatomy."

Q. "Tina Fey or Amy Poehler?"

A. "Both of them. Absolutely!"

Q. "These are either-or questions."

A. "I can’t answer either-or!"

I think they focus-grouped her pick – the only female horse in the race – in the Kentucky Derby too:

"I hope that everybody will go to the derby on Saturday and place just a little money on the filly for me."

Peter Suderman doesn’t understand why Democrats don’t want their politicians going on Fox.

Megan blames the government for the DC Madam’s suicide:

When an unjust law makes someone’s life so unendurable that they end it, I lay much of the responsibility at the foot of the law, the system that contributed. Yes, clinical depression is complicated. But suicide very often has a traumatic trigger, and it’s pretty clear that the trigger here was the unnecessary prosecution of a woman who wasn’t doing anything the government had any business interfering with.

We sometimes forget that the people in the glare of our media frenzies are human beings.