Remember when your liberal friends defended Bill Clinton by arguing that: ?He only lied about sex. And who doesn?t lie about sex?? (Heck, I was one of those clueless liberals at the time. And I still like Bill, incidentally.)
Well, now the same "sophisticated" people who didn't have a problem with Clinton saying, ?It depends on what the meaning of the word is is? are going after Christine O?Donnell full-bore for what they see as the unpardonable, if subtle exagerration of her educational achievements. It's all they can talk about!
Slipping into the liberal mode that I know so well, may I just say, who doesn't subtly exagerrate on their r�sum�? On the campaign trail, Barack Obama routinely told voters he was a Constitutional law professor when the University of Chicago listed him merely as a "senior lecturer." Lynn Sweet from the Chicago Sun-Times writes that "Obama did NOT 'hold the title' of a University of Chicago law school professor." Likewise, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden (God love 'em) boasted about having taken non-existent sniper fire and to having been forced down by non-existent hostiles during official trips abroad. Facing imaginary danger is always a career enhancer for Democrats. And it worked beautifully as Hillary and Joe are both serving in responsible, respectable positions in our federal government. Not to mention how well it worked out for our Lecturer-In-Chief. Everyone got the promotion. Bravo!
Yet Talking Points Memo, Newsweek, and The Huffington Post are in a sanctimonious hissy fit about O'Donnell's claim (in her Linked-In and Zoom-Info profiles) to have taken a course at Oxford University, that actually was sponsored by a less prestigious institution. (Note, it's not clear whether O'Donnell herself put up the profile). Indeed, the same people who were nuanced enough to tell us that oral sex was not real sex, are having trouble accepting a nuanced explanation for O?Donnell?s apparent enhancement of her true record.
"It depends how you phrase it," O'Donnell told The Associated Press.
To use language liberals can understand ? Whether O'Donnell lied or not depends on "what the meaning of the word at is."
Here are the undisputable facts:
Christine O?Donnell did indeed take a three-week seminar in 2001 at the prestigious Oxford University in England that was offered by the Phoenix Institute. The course included lectures from Oxford University professors, and presumably senior lecturers as well. So, when O'Donnell cited Oxford University and the name of the course, "Post-Modernism in the Millennium," in her profile she was not being dishonest.
What she didn't do in her now disabled Linked-In profile, apparently, was provide the full context about the nature of her studies at that school. (Kinda like the way Bill was technically accurate about "not having sex with that woman" in the traditional sense.) O'Donnell should have explained that the Phoenix Institute (which isn't even located in Phoenix, by the way) hosts these rotating summer courses at universities all over the place, including Oxford. But, frankly, does a Linked-In profile or r�sum� really even give you the space to provide that context? She would have had to explain that the Phoenix Institute wasn't even in Phoenix, for crying out loud. Moreover, who cares?
And since r�sum�-gate doesn't involve allegations of perjury before a federal court, or obstruction of justice, let's be honest once again: if you took a three-week course at the prestigious Oxford University in England as Ms. O'Donnell did, would you not want to trumpet that fact rather prominently on your r�sum�? Christine O'Donnell is -- after all-- a bonafide marketing person. And Oxford University is sizzle, baby.
Granted, we never want to be seen as encouraging any form of deception. But really ... it's not like Christine O'Donnell falsely claimed to have served in the Vietnam War. It's not like she falsely claimed to have been a coal miner.
To our knowledge, she's never claimed that she didn't inhale. And she definitely has never promised that everybody can keep their own healthcare plan under Obamacare.
She simply stated she took a summer seminar at Oxford University, and she did.
What's so hard to grasp about that?
Update: Apparently, O'Donnell's Oxford "instructor" enjoyed having her in class.
Via TalkingPointsMemo:
[Bruce W.] Griffin, who once wrote O'Donnell a recommendation to an Ivy league grad school, wrote up a full endorsement that he considers the [The Phoenix Institute/Oxford-based] course equivalent to "any graduate school at any university." From his posting:
The course we did that summer in Oxford is nearly a decade old, but the basic issues we addressed are eternal. Today, too many of the Republic's leaders have abandoned the natural law tradition of the Declaration of Independence for a murky moral relativism--a relativism that is both destructive of democratic values and philosophically bankrupt.
Christine O'Donnell would bring to the US Senate a deepened commitment to the philosophical convictions of the Founding Fathers at a time when the philosophical bankruptcy of too many leaders is mirrored in the economic bankruptcy of the federal government. She would surely add intellectual and philosophical depth to a Senate that at this point in its history badly needs both.
Then this explanation that further backs up O'Donnell...
Here's how Griffin explains it:
Although we were never an Oxford University course, we drew heavily on the faculties of Oxford and Cambridge for our lectures. The organizers had put together a star-studded cast of lecturers, and partly as a result we drew students from Latin America, the US, and Europe.
In a followup interview, Griffin told TPM the Phoenix program was definitely not an Oxford course, but that it was more than just renting space at Oxford. "Our lecturers were drawn heavily from the Oxford faculty, and the opportunity to hear those lecturers was a critical reason for why our students came," he said.
Update II: O'Donnell sat down with the New York Times for a rare interview. It's a fantastic (and surprisingly balanced) piece.
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