I’m sure Jennifer Rubin has a good explanation for this, but it might go over the heads of many reg’lar Americans. Mitt Romney has told two completely different stories about how he found about 9/11.
“I was on the phone to Salt Lake City, doing a radio interview. The interviewer interrupted to say there were reports that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I hung up and turned on the small TV in the office.”
“Someone rushed into our office and said a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I turned the small TV on desk there and watched in shock as flames and smoke erupted from the north tower.”
At least the tv was the right height in both stories.
Rafer Janders
He probably just retroactively retired the earlier memory.
dr. bloor
Hey, there’s a small TV and an office in both. You’re just engaging in DFH gotcha stuff here.
At least he remembered to mention the WTC in both versions.
Rusty
At least the tv was the right height in both stories.
I rarely comment, but boy I laughed hard on this one.
Amit Joshi
Oh, come on! Saw this same crap on DKos. Pretty weak tea, I think.
Romney lies all the time, about much bigger and more important stuff. It’s silly to make a big deal about this.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
It depends on which universe you observed Romney in.
mechwarrior oline
I thought he said he could smell it?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jkMcq2qS45Qz_yGEbRsPdx53di8w?docId=CNG.a4b15f4be06af5b2c5f42d857a75315b.12c1
And I don’t know how he “drove past the pentagon”, he could have, but everybody was walking that day. On a normal day you can drive past the pentagon though.
eric
this is just nutpicking….who amongst us can remember precisely where we were and what we were doing when we learned that, for the first time in American history, a jumbo aircraft was flown into an iconic skyscraper in an iconic city? come on now, be fair.
DougJ
@Amit Joshi:
Al Gore got crucified for less.
Spaghetti Lee
Paul Ryan, of course, was rescuing office workers from the collapsing building.
Groucho48
Is there some kind of backs story to this? Did Obama give two answers about how he learned about it and the right freaked? Or, something like that?
Otherwise, this seems less than trivial.
DougJ
@eric:
In this case, I do remember it vividly. I was in my living room watching tv.
eric
@Amit Joshi: the point is: if you are willing to lie about the small stuff for which you can be caught, you will lie about the big stuff when you wont be caught…it is a pathology
eric
@DougJ: so do i and i believe so do most people. I was in the IBM building here in Chicago watching on my small tv with three people who i can name to this day.
taylormattd
Maybe Mitt can fix this whole mess by having Freddie attribute one of the statements to Ezra Klein.
Auguste
@Amit Joshi: It’s pretty sad that “He lies about other stuff, so give him a break on this one” has become an “argument.”
Amit Joshi
@DougJ, @Eric: Gore was definitely skewered for less, and shame on us Democrats for not slapping the bastards down then. Good that we’re ready to call out Romney’s lies, even small ones.
But come on, be honest: the only variation here is, did the radio interviewer tell Romney, or was it an aide who came into the room to do so? I agree that making the Romney campaign “explain” this would be kinda fun, if it frustrates them. But other than that…
gogol's wife
I was at a gas station and saw a guy in cutoff shorts, long hair, beard, and shades jumping up and down and shouting “Osama bin Laden! Osama bin Laden!” (who wasn’t all that famous at that point). I thought he was a crazy street person, but then I heard a man on the radio say, “The second tower has been hit,” and I started to wake up. It’s as vivid as if it had happened yesterday.
Which isn’t to say that this isn’t a fairly trivial thing to criticize Romney for. We have an embarrassment of riches on that front.
Donut
Perhaps he self-deported from one parallel universe to the other, or something. I hear Mormons are huge string theory geeks. Something or other. Etcetera.
gogol's wife
@Auguste:
I think the appropriate line is “Keep your powder dry.”
mechwarrior oline
@eric:
The details of the day are actually a little bit fuzzy for me. When the first one hit I was on Norfolk Naval base as part of CCG2. We had more than a few pilots in our staff (including the admiral) and when the first one hit commander Cox told us “no way that was an accident, you two come with me now”, and then it was chaos. The cluster fuck only got worse when the plane plowed into the Navy wing of the pentagon.
But most of that day is really just a blur of running all over the place, guns, bomb dogs, and people losing their minds. We weren’t able to just sit and watch.
Wiesman
This is completely meaningless. Whether he was doing an interview and was told by the interviewer or whether someone came into the room and told him is meaningless. Maybe he remembered it wrong in 2007 or maybe he is remembering it wrong now. Maybe he was doing an interview, and someone came into the office and they both said it at the same time. He lies about actual things all the time.
If we make a deal about this it starts to look like Romney Derangement Syndrome.
Hillary Clinton’s evolved story about dodging fire on the tarmac was much worse and is just an example of how our memories become warped over time.
Moving on.
The Dangerman
I hadn’t heard of this story previously, but, according to Snopes:
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/gander.asp
This is related to the passenger planes that were diverted into Newfoundland when the U.S. airspace was closed.
Now, I don’t know who had the imagination to make that claim, but, really, Romney flying commercial? As if.
Sasha
This is just bizarre. I almost think he was doing something he can’t admit and that’s why his stories don’t jibe. I remember exactly what I was doing. I remember the sun shining and it being the perfect day to go the botanical gardens with my daughter. I remember most of what the DJ’s on the radio said, although to be fair, one was near to panic.
I don’t know. Maybe when I’m older the memories will fade but I honestly don’t believe it. Just another thing about Mitt Romney that makes no effing sense.
SatanicPanic
I remember where I was and I remember how I found out, but I don’t remember exactly what I was doing. Does it really matter?
DougJ
@Wiesman:
I didn’t like that either.
Groucho48
I don’t see it as lying. It’s quite possible the guy he was on the phone with told him at the same time someone rushed into his office. Or, the two things happened moments apart.
I happened to be home doing chores and listening to CDs that day and didn’t turn on the TV until it was time for the local news. At the time I turned it on, I honestly don’t remember exactly what I was doing. Could have been one of 3-4 different things.
If I said I was tossing magazines one time I told the story and that I was sorting out CDs another time, doesn’t mean I was lying.
There is way more important stuff about Romney than this nonsense. This is almost a checking for granite counters level of attack.
Scott
@dr. bloor: I have to agree. This is pretty weak I gotcha.
beltane
Romney should be asked for another clarification, if only for the purpose of having him produce a third version of events.
Suffern ACE
@Amit Joshi: I would have to agree. I don’t see him changing the story to make his participation grander. He was interrupted and turned on the TV.
I guess he was in Washington DC for some reason. Probably meeting with private equity firms figuring out how they could profit from it…one can speculate, can’t one?
Donut
@eric:
Um. No.
Why would we want to be fair? This is fucking high stakes politics. Come with everything, including cheap shots, or don’t come at all.
schrodinger's cat
@Spaghetti Lee: While running a marathon in under 3 hours, no less.
Ronzoni Rigatoni
@eric: I remember precisely.
Crusty Dem
@DougJ:
Don’t be so sure, Doug, turns out our memories of traumatic events are largely invented. Remember the memory study following the Challenger explosion?
http://atheism.about.com/od/parapsychology/a/memory.htm
Apologies for the about.com link..
schrodinger's cat
I was in my office checking my e-mail, my brother called me and told me what had happened.
Bokonon
Here is what Mitt Romney REALLY would say (if he was being truthful):
“I was sitting in a secret meeting of the Illuminati when a servant came crawling into the chamber, and said “exalted masters, something unexpected has happened!”
So I turned on the small TV set built into my place at the table and watched in shock … and I wondered “how can I profit by this? This is a great opportunity!!”
SatanicPanic
@schrodinger’s cat: across a row of 14,000 ft Colorado peaks
Dennis SGMM
To me, lying is a form of contempt. If there’s anyone in the entire history of American politics who deserves the label of “contemptuous” it’s Mitt Romney.
dr. luba
This is our generations’s equivalent of the Kennedy assassination. I remember hearing about that, and watching the funeral, and all the adults being sad, but, having been age four at the time, that’s about all I remember. But people who were even a bit older than me can tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they found out.
Or perhaps the moon landing. I recall that clearly, the entire day, even now.
So it’s odd that Romney can’t remember about 9-11. Either he’s lying, or it just didn’t matter that much too him. You’d think it would have made a big impression though–all those bond traders and other financial services folks who died. But may be they weren’t rich enough to count.
quannlace
I agree. Jesus, who knows, probably both happened. ( he was on the phone and somebody came running in.) This kind of silliness is what you get at FreeRepublic.
What i’m pissed off about? It’s 9/11, and both the Prez and Mitt had an agreement to suspend ads and negative campaigning. So Mitt had a speech in front of a National Guard group today…….and he ends up trashing Obama. I guess an ‘agreement’ is just one of those unfortunate ‘facts.’
mechwarrior oline
@Sasha:
I think it depends how hectic your day was that day. I know a lot of people just watched the entire mess on TV, and can remember most of it.
For me the entirety of Norfolk Naval base turned into one giant mess. I was on an Admirals staff at the time and we were running and calling people all over the place. About the only thing I remember is Cox and Walt. It was fairly chaotic. I do remember chain smoking out back of the office when it had calmed down (aka we were certain nobody was going to crash a plane into us).
I dunno, it wasn’t even tragic. I wasn’t sad, upset, angry, or anything like that. It was just a huge mess.
? Martin
@eric: I agree, this is nutpicking. These are minor details not material to the events. Hell, both could have happened near simultaneously and he’s recalling different elements. Doesn’t matter.
wrb
@eric:
Had slept in, in a small cabin. Flipped on the Radio and Bob Edwards was recapping.
Drove to a coastal town 80 miles away and watched on the big TV in a snug upstairs bar (The Wheelhouse, Bandon Oregon.)
Steve
This isn’t much.
gnomedad
The multi-dimensional little dude in Men in Black 3 could explain it. Rmoney should pay attention to the part about “the only realities in which you are successful are the ones in which you tell the truth”. Also, don’t forget to leave a tip.
Donut
@Wiesman:
I am pretty fuckimg close to feeling deranged every time I think about a potential Romney administration. Kitchen sink – we here in the peanut gallery get to chuck that and everything else we got at Romney, because short of donating time and cash, that’s all we can do. You are free of course to go play nice and hope we all have a rational discussion about issues and the best arguments will win…please bring me back a unicorn and a pony when you return from that particular acid trip, okay? Thanks. Fuck, taking away the joy of Romney mockery would make me lose my damn mind.
raven
I emailed the guy who walked into my cube an told me a small plane had hit a building in NYC. He’s a prof at Alaska Anchorage now. Shit, I was in Mr Hollister’s class when word of JFK came down. He sat down, held his face in his hands and said “where do we go from here”.
schrodinger's cat
BTW has anybody been reading Ambinder’s blog. In it he is making excuses for Ryan’s marathon lies, saying he misspoke.
RP
I don’t think he’s lying, but I think it’s perfectly fair to point out that it’s weird that he can’t remember what he wrote about that day in his book.
Rafer Janders
You know, I made fun of Romney in my first post, but to be fair the actual memory of the instance I first learned of is a bit hazy for me due to the shock I was in at the time. I was in Manhattan, but uptown, and remember watching on TV at home with my roommates, one of whose names I remember, and one of whose I don’t. I know that one of them told me first after she’d gotten a phone call, but I can’t be sure about that. Frankly, the first hour or two is a bit of a haze since I was rushing up and down from watching on TV to the pay phones downstairs (since cells were down) to try to check on people I knew who were downtown. So I’ll give him a pass on this.
Ruckus
@eric:
Me.
I was on an airplane heading for the west coast. Sitting next to a girl whose companies headquarters was in the WTC. Was she ever freaked out. Thought all her friends were dead.
I may forget this when the senility sets in fullforce, but not till.
Now I figure this was asked tongue in cheek but it was worth an answer anyway.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@quannlace:
__
Why the hell would a National Guard group agree to act as a campaign prop for the GOP nominee these days? If Obama loses the election, their politically naive asses are going to be thrown into the hellish clusterfuck that the Middle East will turn into right after we and Israel bomb Iran together, faster than you can say “The Neocons are back!”.
Narcissus
I think Romney and Ryan are just the sort of people who lie habitually. They may not even know that they do it. I’d be surprised if there is anything about their lives that they actually remember the unvarnished truth about.
Linda Featheringill
Maybe Mitt honestly doesn’t remember. Which, of course, is scarier.
gex
Well, frankly, this is how memory works. Memories get altered every time we recall them and they get contaminated by pictures and other things that may touch upon them. I didn’t see that those two stories were contradictory necessarily. But the one where he said he drove by the Pentagon and smelled it burning DOES seem to contradict the others.
He’s a compulsive liar AND memory is a tricky thing. It is really difficult to tell which is at play here.
schrodinger's cat
@Narcissus: So true, they are the boys that cried wolf. Nobody is ever going to believe a word coming out of their mouths.
J.W. Hamner
If a Redstater used two similar quotes to illustrate the shameless dishonesty of a Dem we would roll our eyes and mock them endlessly, and that’s all that is all that needs to be said about this nonsense. Dougj has gazed too long into the abyss.
Triassic Sands
Most people, most of the time, remember what they want to remember, rather than what actually happened. In Romney’s case, this tendency is overwhelming, so on any given day, depending on his current mood and perceived needs, he will “remember” what happened differently than what he’ll “remember” on another day. More than anyone I’ve ever seen, Romney seems like a person who will simply invent and/or embellish memories to serve his purposes.
different-church-lady
You serve up enough nothingburgers and eventually everyone starts eating somewhere else.
General Stuck
You all leave Jennifer Rubin alllllone!
She may be the only republican Lady Augusta Bracknell out there. Though K-Low could probly give her a run.
Suffern ACE
Me: Is Mark still there? I missed the call. The subway was running really slowly.
SB: Sounds like you are having some excitement up there today.
Me: Well, the subways stop from time to time.
SB: No, someone flew a plane into the world trade center.
Me: Really? Probably just some guy in a hang glider again. Is Mark in?
My conversation goes on like that for another few minutes. Then the Pentagon plane came in and Mark who was in Tysons ended the call abruptly with “I gotta go.”
I don’t remember much at all because it was another 10 minutes of worrying about being bitched out by my boss for being late and god damn the internet wasn’t working.
I have no clue who finally told me. I remember calling by boyfriend to tell him not to go to work and crying in the office when he picked up the phone. I told him to turn on the TV because he wouldn’t believe me. And I remember him shouting something about “Cowards”.
Got keep these memories fresh every year, lest I run for office some day.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@DougJ: and I was getting on the freeway to drive to work and turned on the radio. It took me like an hour to figure out what they were talking about since the announcers were so freaked out.
But the key point is Mittens went from asking for money from Congress in 2007 to discussing security with Congress today.
Donut
@quannlace:
So you agree this is crap (I do too, but crap I fully support), but yet Romney goes on to trash the current Prez.
Tell me again why I shouldn’t mock Romney? You’re asking Democrats to play by a different set of rules.
Pro tip: those guys will never play by the rules again, and they haven’t done so since…oh, forever. They are kinda done with the whole fair is fair and may the best side win thing on the right.
PurpleGirl
@Amit Joshi: Or was driving past the Pentagon and smelled the fire as he told some convention on Tuesday (in Reno)?
The Moar You Know
Lot of Romney apologists hitting this thread. I wonder why that is?
MCA1
I’m with the much ado about nothing crowd. Yes, I remember the generals of the moment I heard – on the El, halfway downtown. I was listening to what must have been a Walkman. I remember seeing a colleague of mine (whom I still occasionally see and feel very odd about seeing every time I run into him). The two of us were discussing, but no one else on the car was aware of the first plane crashing yet. But, I can’t honestly tell you if I was the one who heard first and told him, or vice versa, or if we both sort of heard at the same time independently. The second plane hit as we were arriving at our stop near the Sears Tower. I had my ass’t bring down a couple files and rode right back home, where I watched on TV for three hours and then spent the rest of the day assembling a new gas grill. Again, some of the real detailed specifics I don’t recall. So it’s entirely possible Romney has a confusing image of the moment in his own head quite innocently.
Aet
It kind of rolled on all morning, the first plane, the second plane, the pentagon, the crash, the collapses, the dust…
It’s not a *SNAP* moment. If you were awake and watching from the _very_ start, it was this slow roll of horrors. I can see it being tough to keep track. He was in the office, turned on the TV, watched, was in shock. Which, incidentally, severely plays with your memory.
The only thing I find odd is that he doesn’t elaborate. I spent the morning first listening to the radio when I woke up, then watching TV, calling my dad’s cell (a dozen times) to make sure he wasn’t driving into DC, driving to class and marvelling at the plane-free sky north of Dulles, listening in class to the whackadoo theories of a muslim student in a history class about jews and conspiracies. It was a crazy but memorable day.
beltane
@Linda Featheringill: That seems the most likely cause of the discrepancy. Both “memories” are extraordinarily bland, generic, and lacking in all human emotion.
Dennis SGMM
I can remember exactly where I was (THe library of Glendora HS) when JFK was assassinated. I can remember the song that was playing (Handbags and Gladrags)that was playing when my TWA freedom bird lifted off of the runway at Tan Son Nhut airbase back in 1972.
Romney is just a fucking liar.
JWL
History is replete with such contradictions in personal recollections. It’s a trait we all share.
Memory is fleet of foot.
That said, it still annoys me to declare that Romney is off the hook on this one.
Nice try, though.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I’ll say it again; Read the full quotes – in 2007 Romney said he was meeting with congress to get money for the winter Olympics, today he’s saying he was discussing security for the games with them. There is Mitt’s twisting the truth for you all. He’s trying imply he was warning Washington about Ben Ladin while trying to hide him taking government cheese.
Thoughtcrime
The obvious answer is that the Romlicant had a new set of false memories implanted since the first statement.
MikeJ
I was on the beltway, had just passed the Dulles Toll Road and hadn’t gotten to River Rd. yet when NPR said a plane, possibly a Cessna or other light aircraft had hit one of the towers. When I got to work one of my officemates and I walked across the street and bought a TV (very little streaming back then) and discussed his daughter who was at work in the Pentagon.
Everyone of voting age remembers exactly where they were and what they were doing. Lying about it is moronic, and exactly what I would expect from Romney. I’m guessing that “being interviewed for SLC radio” didn’t poll well.
Ruckus
Mittens lies. We all know that. The question I ask is why. Is it the start of senility or Alzheimers? Is he just pathological?
Looking back at my dad’s behavior he started to show signs of his Alzheimers around 65, same age as mittens. The signs were subtle but as time went on the behavior intensified and became more and more noticeable until there was no question at all about the diagnosis 8-9 yrs later.
This is another reason why his behavior is vitally important, even the small things. They may be nothing more than a horrible politician, but what if they aren’t?
maya
I not only remember where I was on 9/11, – just getting up on the left coast here and turned on the local FM radio station –
Got one memory older than that: Do you know where you were when JFK was assassinated?
I was just getting back to work at our Comm.Company shack after lunch mess at Camp Lejuene when the news broke over the radio. Shortly after that a 6X arrived from a field exercise with a few jarheads in it. Upon telling the new arrivals what had just happened one of them said; “Probably was an ex-marine who did it.”
Turned out to be an accurate, though at the time, purely snarky, comment.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Linda Featheringill:
Meh.
I’m all for banging on Mitt’s multiple-choice memory on policy and positions, but this really is a nothingburger.
God knows I’ve confused details about important events over the years, stuff that was quite frankly far more immediate and personally important than 9/11, and especially when the day is a little crazy already. I know I was at work; don’t ask me for anything more detailed than that, because I can’t be sure I wouldn’t be wrong.
Personally, I’d rate this as below “not worth giving a crap about.”
Wiesman
@Donut:
I agree that we should throw everything + the kitchen sink at Romney, but only if it is not counter-effective. I don’t think making a big deal about this helps us because I think people look at it and say, “who the fuck cares? Those Democrats just hate Romney no matter what he does.”
I think the Paul Ryan marathon thing works because it undermines Ryan’s image and really, anyone who has done any running knows that you don’t misstate a marathon time by over an hour.
But this? This is bullshit. No one who hasn’t made up their minds cares and anyone can come up with a variety of different scenarios where it’s possible that it’s an innocent mistake.
Remember that we laugh at the RW when they raise this kind of shit about our guys. We shouldn’t be swinging at pitches in the dirt.
Donut
That giant sucking sound you hear is a bunch of fair-minded liberals vacuuming up all the fun. Oh well.
Mike in NC
@Bokonon:
Rudy thought of that first.
Keith G
@dr. bloor:
@Amit Joshi:
@Others
Y’all are right. This is a pretty weak choice. So many important issues or fun and interesting topics to be batted around; yet this is what gets dropped.
Tony J
I don’t see this as trivial or meaningless at all.
Romney is running a lie-based campaign, but he’s getting away with it because – IMHO – his lies have been about what the Obama Administration has done and what the effects of its policies have been. IOW, “He said/She said” stuff that the MSM can excuse and cover-up with the traditional “Both sides do it” narrative when necessary. They want a horserace, and protecting Romney from himself is just something they have to do.
But this kind of lie is different. “How did you learn about the Sept 11th attacks?” is something you really – have – to tell the truth about when you’re running for President. It’s not about politics, it’s about basic credibility and respect for your fellow citizens.
I say get it out there and make the cock-knocker at least try to explain it. Put the Romney strategy of “Whatever lie sounds best at the time” right in front of the electorate and ask them to give their opinion at the ballot-box.
ruemara
@eric: uh, I can. I’m from NYC. I worked WTC 1. My family & friends work in Manhattan. I can recall perfectly what happened when I first saw the report. It was the first thing I saw when I turned on the tv for the weather.
MattR
There are two events that I can still tell you 10+ years later exactly where I was and what I was doing when they happened. One is 9/11. The other is Jeffrey F’in Maier. I need help.
SatanicPanic
@Donut: Aww, like there’s not enough fun to go around. Give Mitt an hour, he’ll say something new and stupid for us to mock.
Aet
What bugs me though is the fact that he WAS in shock.
I don’t want a leader who keeps reading a book to children for another fifteen minutes after he hears the news.
I want a leader who apologizes to the kids, says, “I have to go be president now, I’ll come back soon as I can”, and gets themselves to a microphone.
KG
so, completely OT (except for it’s election related), but I was just looking at stuff on the Senate races. I noticed a pattern that shouldn’t be surprising, but basically, if one nominee had a lot more cash on hand he/she was usually way ahead in the polls (there were a couple of places where they both had a lot of cash on hand and it was statistically tied). The one place where this didn’t seem to hold was Wisconsin, where Baldwin has over $3m and Thompson has less than $500k. Is that just a matter of Thompson having name recognition?
ETA: sorry, let me clarify, Wisconsin is the only place where the money lead doesn’t turn into a polling lead. McCaskill has a big money advantage in Missouri but is only up a point or two; a lead’s a lead, but the Wisconsin one really jumped out at me.
Villago Delenda Est
WTF is wrong with this man? This is a good example of the most simple damn thing in the world to remember, and he tells two substantially different stories?
Perhaps the guy rushed into the office at the same time the interviewer told him about this? I dunno, this makes no sense at all.
I remember exactly what happened. The radio went off, waking me up (I live in the Pacific time zone) and saying something about a plane crashing into the WTC, and I went out to the family room and turned on the TV, and there it was.
LanceThruster
I was on the phone to Salt Lake City getting my marching orders, and they said when asked about it in the future, say someone rushed in to tell you as it sounds more dramatic.
MikeJ
@KG: If you’re behind in the polls why on earth would you have cash on hand instead of up on the air?
pragmatism
when he uses the seer stones and reads the sacred text in the hat about his recollection, the story may change. that’s what happened to joseph smith as well.
Suffern ACE
@KG: Yes. Tommy Tompson would still be governor of Wisconsin, serving his 1000th term, had he not gone off to Washington to become a secretary of something or other and then a lobbyist.
Donut
@Wiesman:
First, who are these “people” you’re talking about? “Independent” voters? Ha ha. Ponies and unicorns….
Second, you phrased your reply like there’s something wrong with “people” knowing that Romney is hated. That’s kinda the point. He needs to be made not only a bad option, but completely fucking unacceptable, IMO.
Ymmv, of course, as the cliché goes.
KG
@MikeJ: there’s some logic in waiting to spend ad money until closer to the general election. How many people are tuning out campaign ads four or five months prior to the election? Also, spending money on GOTV would mean holding on to it until closer to the election.
cckids
The thing I most noticed about the story(s) was that Romney just HAD to work the “saving the Olympics” meme into even his memory of 9/11. It couldn’t just be “I was at my desk & heard the news”, he has to get that mention in there. Its as though he’s being paid a royalty or something.
Violet
Why do we care where candidates for office were when they heard or saw the news? Who fucking cares? They heard it, either right away as it happened, or even days later if they were on some desert isle or something. Who fucking cares?
They can STFU about it and tell me what they’re going to do with the disasters that have unfolded since then as a result–multiple wars, erosion of civil liberties, 9/11 first responders’ illnesses, that kind of thing. Otherwise, STFU. Unless you candidates were THERE in one of those buildings or right adjacent to them, or you were a first responder who rushed to the scene and helped the wounded, your stories are useless tripe delivered to try to gin up emotion in the listener and get them to vote for you. STOP DOING THAT.
NEWSFLASH: We ALL heard the news at some point. Some of us within seconds of the first plane, some of us days later. We were ALL affected somehow. You candidates are no better or worse or different than the rest of us.
Donut
@Tony J:
It’s useless to argue with them. Have to be genial and focus on real issues. Sorry.
LanceThruster
What I’ll never forget about that day, is that I drove into work like regular, and for exactly a day and a half, commuters were actually considerate to each other during the rush hours. And then just like the time it takes smog to return after a cleansing rain…it was gone.
Donut
@SatanicPanic:
Ok, I quit now.
Greg
There were two planes that hit two towers. It sounds like he heard about the first one when he was on the phone, and the second one when the dude came in and turned on the TV. This is pretty weaksauce.
? Martin
@Donut:
Flip it over. What’s to be gained by this line of attack? Romney doesn’t give us more than enough real material to work with?
Focus is about saying ‘no’. Stay focused on the big things – not this stupid crap.
Cheryl from Maryland
@mechwarrior oline: This. I don’t care if the radio interviewer or someone else told him, but that he said drove past the Pentagon that day is utter bullshit unless he went late at night – and even then — my spouse thinks many of those roads were closed until the next day.
I was in a DC office building in an underground floor at 12th and Constitution — our office was having staff meeting. I can’t recall how someone in my office found out, but that person did and rushed into the meeting. We all watched TV for a few minutes, heard about the Pentagon being hit basically right across the Potomac, and were told to evacuate. No telephones including land lines were working — everyone was trying to call someone, so the system was overloaded.
My colleagues who lived in Virginia either stayed in DC in a hotel or walked home — as in walked to Georgetown (the 14th Street Bridge was closed), crossed the Key Bridge and then walked through Arlington to their homes. Living in Rockville, MD , I hitched a ride with a friend who lived in NW DC — it took about an hour to get three blocks. Amazingly, the Metro was running, so I left the car and eventually got home. Never was able to get through to my spouse via regular land line or cell until we both got home; never was able to call my spouse’s parents in Northern Virginia to see if all were safe until that evening. Wasn’t able to tell my parents in SW Virginia that I was safe until late in the afternoon. They were scared.
So again, if Romney was in DC and says he went anywhere except by his own two legs and was able to talk to someone on the phone that morning, I call total bullshit. It was one of the most frightening days of my life, and I wasn’t even in danger, all things considered. He is a lying piece of crap.
MikeJ
@KG: That’s true, but it all depends on how far behind and how much money you have. If you get the numbers up you can pull in more cash. If you’re $3m up and and 5% down less than 60 days from the election you should rethink your strategy.
I’d also argue that 90% of the GOTV spending is done at least 60 days out. Voter ID and coordinating volunteers sucks up more cash than actual election day activities do.
Suffern ACE
@cckids: Now that I understand what the real difference is – in one story he’s saving the olympic finances. In the next story, he’s briefing congress on security. He’s America’s Governor, for sure.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Villago Delenda Est:
Depends. If you’re hip-deep in running a major event (hey, work with me here) juggling several issues at a time, the exact details of the who and the how aren’t going to be cemented properly, and can very well change over time.
I know this happens, because it’s happened to me. It’s not Alzheimer’s, it’s not deliberately lying, it’s just a fallible piece of meat that’s subconsciously filling in missing details with whatever sounds good at the time.
hells littlest angel
The memoir was actually written by Bizarro Romney. The original, unedited manuscript reads: “Me turn off TV and see wonderful sight of tower in flames.”
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
Everything.
The cumulative effect of getting to know Willard–from the (mostly concealed) big things to the trivial–show him to be a shallow, rigid, pompous, incurious, insecure shell of a man. The trickle of mostly controlled “insights” fed us to humanize him only reinforce everything we fear about him.
I particularly enjoyed the anecdotes about how he continually orders the same damn fast food and picks out the same damn components from it again, and again, and again. You know that in some subassembly, WillardBot is thinking “Why can’t they just make this the way I like it, for Pete’s sake?”
Donut
@Suffern ACE:
This is pretty much true. I lived in WI for most of Thompson’s terms, and he was not embraced by all, not by any means, but dude was basically the King for as long as he wanted it.
NancyDarling
I had turned on the tv to catch the weather while I put on my shoes and socks before leaving for work. I am pretty sure it was a Tuesday that year, too. I didn’t have time to stay home and watch more and heard about the second plane as I was driving to work.
My mother was ironing and listening to the radio December 7, 1941, when she heard about Pearl Harbor. She never forgot that it was a Sunday although she probably couldn’t have told you what article of clothing she was ironing. On the other hand, I never asked her; she might have remembered that as well.
SatanicPanic
@cckids: I’m the Republic Nominee for the President of the United States, brought to you by the Salt Lake City Olympic committee
Why do you keep saying that?
Cause they pay me every time I do. It’s a really good way of making money. You’re so smart, why don’t you know that?
scav
Human or not, expected or not, it still is pretty sloppy from a practical grunt-level pure political career viewpoint not to have his “memory” of an iconic event like that on autodial by more than a decade later. But again, old news.
hep kitty
It really happened that way. It’s just that he can’t remember who told him because it was the help.
Donald G
On September 11th, I had gotten the kids and the wife off to school and the office, and having had a bout of insomnia the night before, was putting myself to bed to catch a few hours of sleep.
A few minutes after the first planes crashed, I received a call from my brother telling me to turn on the TV now. He had just gotten off work on the night shift and had stopped by his girlfriends apartment to check on something before going on to his own. We watched and traded what info we were getting from television. Then he rang off and went to his apartment. Later, he calls me back. His cable is down. So I spent the morning relaying to him what news I was receiving from the only network affiliate I could receive OTA down in my Appalachian holler.
I remember it like it was yesterday. Of course, I was only 34 at the time and not in my early fifties like Mitt.
KG
@MikeJ: ah, gotcha, see, I don’t know a whole lot about the actual mechanics of electioneering. And for the record, the polls since mid-August show Thompson up anywhere between 5 and 11 points, hovering around 50%.
Donut
@Suffern ACE:
This is pretty much true. I lived in WI for most of Thompson’s terms, and he was not embraced by all, not by any means, but dude was basically the King for as long as he wanted it.
Any other former or current Wisconsinites remember the infamous photoshop of Thompson in bondage gear, done by the old school Onion?
‘Sexecutioner Tommy Thompson struts his stuff for the voters’
Good times.
Villago Delenda Est
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Unfortunately, I’ve never been hip deep in preparing or running some huge event at the same time as a news story of major historical proportions broke, so I can’t speak to that.
Closest I can come to it was being involved in a command and staff exercise at Fort Lewis the day the Challenger blew up on launch, and trying to get a broadcast signal on a TV that was strong enough to let the other participants in on the story.
Everyone stopped what they were doing for five minutes and watched.
hep kitty
I was at work. One of our attorneys was our republican Congressman who later got beat out by a teabagger. Of average intelligence, he was a genuinely nice, pleasant fellow. Too nice and civil for teabaggers. He stood next to me while we watched the second tower in the conference room with a whole bunch of other people. I remember him putting his face in his hands. I just stared.
Later on, some woman, a bank employee, I guess, started singing loudly in the lobby, like she’s on stage. America the Beautiful, something like that.
ChrisNYC
Oh come on! The reason for the difference is he didn’t want to say he was doing a radio interview. He didn’t want to say he was in some office in DC, where he was based to lobby for public dough and doing a radio interview in Utah (and no doubt crowing about all the delish money he was bringing back). Not very patriotic, that! And very very rich guy. That’s why he cut it out.
Tony J
@Donut:
Meh, I’m English, so I can tell the difference between ‘genial’ and “Fuck, fuck fuckety-fuck! Will you please shut up”.
I do not understand the problem with taking two contradictory accounts from the Republican candidate for President of the United States regarding the Sept 11th attacks and asking him which one he’s lying about.
If you want to get the fact that Romney is a serial liar out there two months before an election you absolutely have to win, this seems like a perfectly adequate vehicle to do your driving in.
Ruckus
@The Moar You Know:
Lot of Romney apologists hitting this thread. I wonder why that is?
Not sure all of them are actually apologizing. We all have memory lapses from time to time, some more so than others. Some of us fill in details from later, some say they don’t remember but things come into focus later.
What I don’t get is 9/11 was one of those shared, really big fucking deal days. Most of us don’t have a whole lot of those in our lives. For many like me here the list is probably something like JFK, 9/11. We remember these events. A politician over 60 who can’t/doesn’t have a vivid memory of these two days? I call bullshit. Unless these things were not that important to mittens. Which is worse, crappy memory or lying for whatever value in might bring?
trollhattan
@Villago Delenda Est:
On an incredibly trivial level, I was working a big conference when the OJ verdict was delivered. The conference center office had a radio playing it and at the same time my job was to go meet the State Controller and get her to her speaking gig. The first thing she asked, “What was the crowd’s reaction when they heard the verdict?”
That’s laser-etched in my brain, and 9/11 was a little more memorable than OJ.
hep kitty
I didn’t think we should have bombed Afghanistan. I would not dare say that to anyone! I thought we should have handled it like Clinton did.
Sasha
Well, I think Enhanced Voting Techniques is right on the money. We have all been focusing on the wrong part of the quotations. He just wanted to make his story a little bit sexier, a little bit more presidential and probably forgot it was in his book. Or maybe he just doesn’t care about the discrepancy; it’s not like this is the first one.
I’m not claiming that I remember every detail of the day just every detail of that moment; asking my daughter if she understood what happened, explaining a little of it, telling her we would not be going to the botanical garden and the 45 minute drive home trying to calculate how many people would die or be injured (I came up with 50,000) so I was, mercifully, way off and wondering if this was the start of something more.
I remember where I was when the Rodney King Verdict came in, as well; I was so stunned I couldn’t move at first.
Patricia Kayden
The Bot flips and flops so rapidly and fiercely that perhaps he is right that he simultaneously learned about 9/11 in two very different ways.
jp7505a
This would be embarrisngly weak even on faux news. But then so is how many daily security meetings Obama attended and the right is all a twitter over that. Give it a rest. R&R have more important things to answer for.
trollhattan
@Patricia Kayden:
Maybe that’s it, he was trying to multitask, running Lotus 1,2,3 and Sim City at the same time, so boff iz tru.
MattR
@Ruckus:
I guess the question is do we really remember these events as they happened? Or do we just think we have a firm memory but we don’t know for sure since there is nothing/nobody to challenge them?
hep kitty
Can’t say I’ve ever had a bad acid trip but . . .
(not as long as it looks, the credits run for 3 minutes, that’s right, 3 minutes)
Joe Buck
Oh, come on. This is very weak. If challenged, Mitt will just say that the two stories are the same because he was doing the radio interview from his office.
He’s told at least a hundred real lies; please don’t waste our time with weak, inconsequential, and easily refuted “gotcha” stuff. That’s what the media did to Al Gore, who, unlike Mitt, did not deserve it.
Bob In Portland
“I was in Dallas for the Pepsi Convention. But I flew out the day before. I was in a taxicab.”
MattR
@hep kitty: I did not watch the video but I saw this comment
I assume that 1/1/2008 is an attempt at an Obama reference but it is so far off the mark that I started wondering if something else significant happened on that day that I’ve completely forgotten.
Ruckus
@Sasha:
I remember where I was when the Rodney King Verdict came in, as well; I was so stunned I couldn’t move at first.
I remember thinking when I heard it that it was bullshit. I don’t remember anything else. And I lived 3-4 miles from where it happened and drove by there twice a day so it should have made more of an impact. But then I pretty much expected what happened when they tried it in Simi Valley.
tjmn
My husband was supposed to be at a meeting at the Pentagon that day. He got caught up watching the tv. After the Pentagon was hit, traffic was a real problem so he never made it over there that day. His office was in Crystal City not far from the Pentagon. I doubt Mitt was driving by it. It took my hubby about 8 hours to get home. I did manage to find out he was ok before all the cell phone lines went crazy. It was late afternoon before I could call one relative that we were ok and to pass the message on. I do remember no one knowing what to do. It was like complete puzzlement and horror that this could happen.
David Koch
Memries,
Like the corners of my mind
Misty water-colored memories
Of the way we were
Scattered pictures,
Of the smiles we left behind
Smiles we gave to one another
For the way we were
Can it be that it was all so simple then?
Or has time re-written every line?
If we had the chance to do it all again
Tell me, would we? could we?
Memries, may be beautiful and yet
What’s too painful to remember
We simply choose to forget
So it’s the laughter
We will remember
Whenever we remember…
The way we were…
The way we were…
grandpa john
@Amit Joshi:
Well actually that is the point, he lies so habitually even about things that are not important, that you can never trust him. He has a serious character flaw, he is a chronic liar, so why would any one think that he would really do what he promises.
catclub
@Rafer Janders: I think the whole point is that normal people either have one story, or say they are not sure and it is hazy. Habitual liars simply make something up, as that is no harder than remembering, but much easier than saying they are not sure, or, ‘I think’.
Protothad
Actually, when you read the entire descriptions, they are nearly identical with the only difference being whether the person on the phone told him or someone coming into the office. It seems like a rather pendantic to quibble about that sort of detail… I could easily get mixed up about something like that when it happened so many years ago. Hey, I’m no fan of Romney… but doesn’t this make us seem a bit petty ripping on him about something like this?
Ruckus
@MattR:
I’m pretty sure that some will not have clear memories. I’m just as sure that for many a day like 9/11 or Pearl Harbor or JFK, those are things we don’t forget. They burn too big and clear an area in our brains. At least as I said earlier, till senility sets in.
Richard
I’d only make a big deal out of something like this if Romney had changed his story from the mundane one described here to a Paul Ryan style resume padding tall tale, with him say bragging about how he used his awesome physical strength to pull victims out of Pentagon rubble.
ChrisNYC
I don’t think it’s weak at all. And, my God, it’s hardly what happened to Gore. Politico was pushing oh he’s being treated like John Kerry because umm Dems have the nerve to point out that Romney forgot about the war. Bull.
We have a candidate here who says whatever version of whatever he’s talking about, as he thinks is most beneficial to him in the moment. He’s unable to be straight and is also unable to take full responsibility for a single thing he’s done in his life. All upside, the bad bits go down the memory hole and it’s an overstep to even ask him about them. It’s nonsense.
catclub
@Joe Buck: You never know until long afterward, whether any particular event is the “Have you no decency”, moment. For all I know, this might be it for the press and their relation with the Romney lies. I suspect many in the press have very distinct memories of 9/11, so having multiple memories could be the lie too far for them.
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
Notice I also said earlier that this event may not have been that big a deal to mittens. Did it cost him any money? Could he make money off of it? Could it hurt/help him politically? If those are the only important things to mittens then 9/11 might not have been a big deal day for him.
MattR
@Protothad:
Very probably both is short succession.
More importantly, IMO, does it weaken the “Romney is a liar” meme by associating him with this type of lie rather than the more serious ones he has made regarding health care, taxes, etc? If the public views this as significant and it takes on an “Al Gore invented the Internet” life, that will obviously help Obama. But if the public passes it off as a minor, insignificant detail in the telling of the story it actually makes the Democrats look a bit like the boy who cried wolf for highlighting this as a lie which would make the public more skeptical of other claims that Romney is a liar.
@Ruckus: Sad but true.
Calouste
I don’t see why people call this “a memory lapse”.
It was a fucking prepared speech.
catclub
So where was this office he was in? IN 2001 wasn’t he running the 2002 SLC Olympics? Does that mean his office was in DC sucking money out of the federal government? He has said that he drove (was chauffeured) by the pentagon (the same day? some other day?
Now the questions are multiplying.).
Lojasmo
@DougJ:
Me too. Living room watching teehee before going out for coffee with wife and son. It was a brisk, sunny morning, and when I saw the hit, I said aloud” I am surprised it didn’t happen earlier.”. Then went to coffee, and watched the melee unfold.
The Ancient Randonneur
Oh my, somebody was wrong on the internet–again. I’m going to be up ALL NIGHT!
dance around in your bones
I was living in Mexico when a neighbor came running over and said a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center buildings. We went over to watch the news on her TV (we didn’t have one) and got there in time to see the second plane hit.
She started doing tequila shots because she was so upset. (A bit of herb was involved, as well).
I remember every gawd-damned moment of that day, and I wasn’t even in the country. It ended with a community dinner that had one person slamming out the door because said person was upset at people commenting that American foreign policy may have invited this kind of attack.
I did notice that yesterday on MSNBC they were already running the 9/11 pr0n.
Gads.
Mitt – whatever. He lies about EVERYTHING.
trollhattan
@MattR:
Y2K finally hit, because they had the calendar wrong?
I dunno either.
The Sailor
@gex: It’s in his book, hasn’t he read HIS book?
I was in my truck heading to work when I heard about the 1st tower, I thought “maybe it’s bad weather, the Empire State Building got hit by a plane in WWII”. Then I arrived at work and saw the replay. And everyone in the office was glued to the TV for hours.
Memories do change with recall; maybe I wasn’t in 1st grade class when JFK was shot and the teacher came in and told us, maybe I wasn’t napping on the couch when Bobby Kennedy was shot, maybe I wasn’t glued to our B&W TV when Armstrong walked on the Moon, maybe I misremember 9/11, but if I put it in a fucking book at the time I could goddamn well look it up!
They are not just liars, they are lousy liars, and do it by habit, without remorse.
p.s. I apologize for the rant.
Maude
In the Pentagon story, how would Romney know what the smoke of war smelled like?
Omnes Omnibus
@grandpa john: From Too Much Joy’s, That’s A Lie:
“You lied about the things
That you lied about”
Yutsano
@trollhattan: Mayybe the universe ended and we just got caught up doing other things to notice. Or Daleks. Never rule out the Daleks.
Richard
@ChrisNYC:
I don’t see version #2 being any more beneficial to him than version #1. As I stated above, if he had puffed things up, then, yes, he’d deserve a beat down. This example simply doesn’t warrant the effort, particular given the far more egregious lies that seriously need to be targeted for demolition, the welfare nonsense, “you didn’t build that”, etc.
trollhattan
@The Sailor:
Apology for telling the truth? None needed.
trollhattan
@Maude:
To Willard, war smells like angry French people, slamming the front door.
trollhattan
@Yutsano:
Daleks! [shakes fist at canister vac]
Villago Delenda Est
@The Sailor:
We know he’s lying because he can’t stick to a single story.
That’s the problem with lies. You forget which version you told, and then you trip yourself up with a new version.
Just tell the damn truth, Mitt. Really. Don’t try to spin it to make yourself look better. Just tell the truth. Don’t try to embellish it, don’t try to appeal to some focus group, just be honest. For once in your miserable life as a parasite, be honest.
Joel
@schrodinger’s cat:
You know, it’s only now that I realize that he’s no longer at the Atlantic.
Comrade Mary
To me, it’s briefly amusing because he is such a liar in many other ways. I doubt that this discrepancy is something anyone is actually going to push hard because not only are we looking at the kind of muffled detail change that is entirely plausible (see the related phenomenon “flashbulb memory”), the change in details isn’t the least bit self-aggrandizing. There is absolutely no gain for him if people believe one story over the other.
I’m still snickering, though.
mai naem
Forget Romney where was Ryan? Was he in NYC running up the stairs of the WTC and saving 15 people, carrying them on his P90X manly man arms? Or was he at the Pentagon, having a meeting about increasing the Al Quaeda Group Intel Budget and then running out and saving 15 people carrying them on his P90X manly man arms in 2mins 50 some seconds?
Joel
@Rafer Janders: This is an easy memory for me, because the whole day was weird.
First, I was studying abroad.
I remember riding my bicycle down the street when a polish guy that I knew stopped me and said, smiling – I remember this, because it’s truly unsettling – that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon. No mention of the World Trade Center. I dropped by the apartments where several of my friends were living and they were all gathered in the common area, watching TV. The scene was surreal. I was trying to call my family in the US to make sure my NYC relatives were okay, but the lines were tied up for hours. Another guy was trying to find out if his father, who had a x-country flight from Boston to LAX, was okay (he was, his flight was scheduled afterwards).
I don’t know if my memory will fail on this one. It was a pretty bizarre experience.
Comrade Mary
@Crusty Dem: Yep, that’s a good source, too (even if it is About.com).
Catsy
@Amit Joshi:
On the assumption that this isn’t just concern trolling: no, it’s not silly. It’s one more data point that helps drive home the fact that Romney cannot be trusted to lie about even the smallest things. Everyone has a different threshold, a different point of critical mass where they finally get this about Romney. For some people, this will be the last straw. For others, it will be one straw closer to that.
ChrisNYC
@Richard: I do.
I agree it’s not screaming but Mitt is the kind of guy that is campaigning about repealing a bill modeled on his own greatest achievement as governor because — that’s what makes sense RIGHT NOW and people would give him crap for Romneycare so — out the window it goes. Guy does not have a high bar or a low water mark for shading the truth to make himself more unctuously appealing.
It’s different to be told by a radio interviewer about 9/11 than by some loyal young wonk updating the boss. I for one, was not being interviewed on the morning of September 11. He’s trying to be relatable — not a super rich guy who is from everywhere and nowhere, doing radio interviews from DC (where he does not live) to SLC (where he does not live) before he sets off to “home,” whereever the hell he was laying his head in that period of time. “Someone in my office came running in and told me and I turned on the tv like everyone else in the goddamn country.” That’s a lot of peoples’ story and Mitt wants it to be his too, for now. When he wrote the book, he was pumping up awesome Olympics cred so yeah then he would cop to the interview.
aimai
@DougJ:
I think as we get farther and farther away from the Clinton years, the Bush/Gore campaign, and what was done to Kerry it gets harder for people to believe just how pilloried a Democrat would have been over this kind of remark. I recently saw the Focus on the Family guy simultaneously attack the Dems over the “god” kerfuffle and in the same interview explain that he would continue to support Akin because he “merely misspoke” and “good people won’t stay in politics” if they are going to be driven out just because of one, tiny, slip of the tongue. The mind reels at the dishonesty but there you have it. There are no small sins in modern American politics, only political actors too scared to seize a mole hill and call it a mountain.
aimai
aimai
@ChrisNYC:
This is an extremely perceptive comment. A great reading of a complicated matter.
Larkspur
@dr. luba:
Yeah, although I think the event mattered a lot to him. What doesn’t matter is what he says to us, right now. He believes reality is fungible.
Talking about this isn’t “gotcha” stuff. I don’t think he should drop out of the race because of it. It’s not an extinction-level event. But it’s telling. It’s been eleven years. He ought to have perused his recollection before now. I mean, he’s running for office, for Pete’s sake.
Catsy
@Protothad:
And who among us hasn’t gotten confused about whether we were being interviewed on the radio or just talking to an employee when we learned about the worst terrorist attack ever committed on American soil?
It’s truly stunning how some people feel so compelled to bend over backwards to give the benefit of the doubt to an inveterate liar telling two different stories about an important moment.
MattR
@Joel: My mother called me and said something like “Don’t plan on going into the city tonight to visit friends because a couple planes just hit the WTC.” There was something in the way she said it that made me think a couple Cessna’s collided and richoted into one of the buildings. I thought she was giving me a warning about traffic so I paid minimal attention to it and continued to race through my apt getting ready for work. It wasn’t until I got into the car, turned it on and had news rather than music coming out of my radio that I realized exactly what had happened.
The Sailor
If Willard was on the radio, it should be easy to fact check.
Groucho48
I was in school when JFK was shot. It was, I think, second period. I can’t remember who first announced it. Can’t remember if it came over a loudspeaker or whether the teacher was called on the class phone and he told us.
I could name the teacher and most of the kids sitting near me. I remember the first announcement was a vague one…something has happened to the President. It was next period when we heard…this time I remember it coming over the speakers…that he had been shot and we had a prayer for him. An hour or so later, school was dismissed.
So, I remember the broad outlines of what happened, but, not the details. I don’t remember at all who told me Kennedy was dead.
I mean, really, this is just a dumb gotcha and we are embarrassing ourselves by focusing on it.
If we nitpick about this, it diminishes our attacks on his important lies…like about Medicare, or, the “you didn’t build that” lie, or his position on pre-existing conditions, or, any of a bunch of other stuff that actually matters and that voters will agree actually matter.
For me, a good test of whether an issue is worth pursing is imagine talking about it to some one pretty non-political, like a a fellow worker, or a buddy at a bar. This example would get blank “Huh, who cares?” from just about anyone I could imagine telling it to. Because, no one cares whether Romney was told by the guy on the phone or by someone who walks into his office. No one.
Rafer Janders
Even people on this thread who say “I recall perfectly” may only think they do. Memory isn’t a video recorder, and we don’t have perfect playback. You may be 100% convinced you remember every detail — but odds are, you’re wrong. Research into memory has shown that time and time again.
Jibeaux
I don’t think it matters much. But I think he ought to get hammered to kingdom come for that “Obama thinks we need more police, firefighters, teachers . Didn’t he learn from Wisconsin?” bullshit.
Larkspur
@Rafer Janders: I think I recall reading something like that, but I could be wrong. But really, I recall exactly where I was and how I heard. I do not recall what color underpants I was wearing, or whether I brushed my teeth before or after I heard, or whether I muttered “What the hell?” instead of “Oh, shit!”, so yes, not perfect photographic recollection, but good enough to swear to under oath.
chopper
@Cheryl from Maryland:
indeed. i was on the metro trying to get to work in crystal city that morning and sleepily took the green line instead of the yellow at chinatown. by the time i got back to gallery place the yellow line was already stopped and all hell had broken loose on the roads. my boss had to go buy a bike to get home.
there’s no fucking way mittens hopped in a car and drove from DC out past the pentagon right after the attacks.
chopper
@Patricia Kayden:
i wonder what his resonant frequency is. maybe if we tune the right frequency we could amplify the effect while he’s giving a speech. something similar to the ‘brown note’.
Emma
@MattR: I remember exactly. I was working the evening shift at the library. I came out of the shower to get something to eat when my father said that there was a news report that someone had flown a small plane into the WTC. Then the newsman said it had been a jet. Then, a few minutes later, a second image of a plane flying into the towers and the guy said, ‘that was another plane, another plane has hit the WTC.’
Lurking Canadian
At this point, people should start reporting each time Romney says something that is verifiably true, on the man-bites-dog principle.
Rafer Janders
@Larkspur:
You think you do. You may very well be right — the odds are good that you are. But without a contemporaneous video recording, there’s no way to confirm or deny that your memory is accurate. Because your only guide to whether your memory is correct is, paradoxically, your own memory.
For example, I remember being at a party a dozen years ago. I remember the weather, what I wore, who was there, the music, etc. But on checking a calender last year and talking with my parents, I realized I was actually visiting them the weekend of the party and couldn’t have attended. But I’ve heard so much about that party, seen so many pictures, heard so many stories, etc., that I created my own false memory of having been there. Even today I “remember” it — but those memories, accurate as they seem to me, are false.
MattR
@Lurking Canadian: All we would hear are crickets (and Tunch) chirping,
grandpa john
@The Sailor: Yes so true. I think this quote is the perfect description of Lying Mitt;
QUOTATION: We assume that politicians are without honor. We read their statements trying to crack the code. The scandals of their politics: not so much that men in high places lie, only that they do so with such indifference, so endlessly, still expecting to be believed. We are accustomed to the contempt inherent in the political lie.
ATTRIBUTION: Adrienne Rich
(b. 1929), U.S. poet. repr. In
Ruckus
@chopper:
There is also no way he could have gotten on any plane and flown home(where ever that was at the time). All planes other than military were grounded.
MattR
@Rafer Janders:
From the NY Times obit of Dr Ulric Neisser, who pretty much invented the field of cognitive psychology, did the Challenger study that someone linked to above and headed the panel created by the American Psychological Association to look into The Bell Curve.
@Rafer Janders:
The NY Times description of the Challenger experiment
Larkspur
@Rafer Janders: I do recognize the accuracy of what you’re saying. For example, I’m pretty sure I’d fail miserably if I were asked for eyewitness testimony or to give a description for a sketch artist. I tend to not give my full, direct attention to people’s faces unless I’m actually engaged in a conversation with them. It just makes me uneasy. I’d have to tell the investigator the truth while being careful not to be led to say something I’m not sure of.
MattR
While googling Ulric Neiiser, I came across an article at the American Psychological Association website from last year titled “Seared in Our Memories” that discusses research that used 9/11 to look into “flashbulb memory” – how we remember those “bigger than life” moments. A couple excerpts include a criticism of Neisser’s Challenger experiment
and then a study that used MRI to look at what part of the brain was being activated when they were answering questions about 9/11. It looked for differences based on physical proximity to the actual events.
The whole thing is worth a read.
The Sailor
@grandpa john: Thank you.
Also, too, we need some ‘like’s buttons.
OTOH, if I could just like what other folks write maybe I wouldn’t be so ““ALACK AND ALAS MY TOP HAT HAS FALLEN”.
HRA
@eric:
“this is just nutpicking….who amongst us can remember precisely where we were and what we were doing when we learned that, for the first time in American history, a jumbo aircraft was flown into an iconic skyscraper in an iconic city? come on now, be fair.”
Me -I can remember it very clearly. I was at work. I was just picking up my assignment of books to catalog for our library when a coworker said a plane just crashed into the WTC and they are saying it’s a light aircraft like a Cessna. Within minutes he’s saying JC it’s a commercial jet. Then he jumps up from his desk and yells another jet crashed into it, too. Now we are all trying to find a TV that hasn’t been gutted in order to play videos for cataloging. It’s not to be had. I run to my desk to get on CNN and it’s not coming on. I switch to radio and find a station in TN broadcasting it live. I’m interrupted by this horrific outcry by a student from NYC working in our dept. who has relatives working at the restaurant on the top floor of the one tower.
I can continue well into all the hours of the day. I think I have delivered my message.
karen marie
@eric: You don’t? I will never ever forget. I won’t forget where I was, how I was feeling, what I was doing or who I was with.
I was sitting under a tree in a lovely public park with my pair of Cocker spaniels, having a lovely breakfast of a Portuguese cheese and butter sammich washed down with a latte. I sat there under that tree with my lovely companions wandering close by while I alternately gazed upon the beautiful early September day and read the crap local newspaper. Then I strolled home to find my phone machine light blinking. My brother had called to tell me to turn on the TV. The only thing I’m unclear about is the precise time but it was somewhere around 9:15, 9:30 a.m.
I find it astonishing that anyone would not remember precisely what they had been doing immediately before they heard the news.
karen marie
@Crusty Dem: I remember precisely where I was for that. On the tarmac in Chicago awaiting takeoff on a commercial jet. The flight was delayed and they played a fucking loop of the exploding Challenger over and over and over and over. I was terrified when the plane finally took off.
MattR
@karen marie: Not as bad as Jet Blue flight 292 in 2005 that had issues with the landing gear deploying and had to divert to an airport with a longer runway as well as circling to burn fuel. The passengers on board were watching the news reports via DirecTV before one of the crew (or someone from corporate) thought to kill the feed. I can’t imagine listening to “experts” opine about my chances for survival
hhex65
there must be a picture somewhere of Rmoney sporting 3 popped collars
ericblair
No, this is not a big deal in the scheme of things and as far as dumb things the Rombot did today, well, the night is still young. However, if you’re trying to make the case that Romney’s a serial liar, remember you’re making it to the “independent voters”. Said independent voters are not the most attuned people to current events and politics, to put it mildly. So pointing out that Romney’s a liar may take about a hundred repetitions before it sinks into these super-low-information maybe-voters. Keeping your powder dry for the Really Big Lie isn’t going to help to convince people who don’t pay attention to reality all that much.
And as far as the argument that It Just Wouldn’t Be Cricket, we passed Cricket, Aussie Rules Football, and even UFC quite a while ago, in case anyone hadn’t noticed.
karen marie
@MattR: Just because you have a shitty memory doesn’t mean everyone else does. It’s just too convenient that Romney’s current memory makes him out to be some kind of responsible person when he was in DC with his hand out for the Olympics (costliest in US history).
He’s an asshole and should be hit about the head and shoulders with every available piece of evidence of his assholishness, including this.
karen marie
@Protothad: Well, no, the other difference is his earlier memory he was lobbying for funds versus requesting additional security. That’s a pretty significant difference in memory.
Comrade Mary
@karen marie: Oh, the FRAMING of the whole story reeks of Romney’s inherent assholitude. No doubt about that. But the differences between the stories is fairly trivial. I’m laughing at the asshole — of COURSE there’s a discrepancy between his stories — but I don’t think this ONE thing is the key to his character because many non-assholish people with usually decent memories can fall prey to the same error. Not all of them, not even most of them, but when you look at large groups, the error rate is high enough to be A Real Thing.
And what MattR and several of the rest of us have described, quoted and linked in this thread isn’t about some people having shitty memories and other people having perfectly good memories. It’s about a pattern of imperfection in how human beings store, index and retrieve memories.
No one here with vivid memories of 9-11 is being accused of being a confabulator, a liar or somebody with a shitty memory. What we’re saying is that even vivid “flashbulb” memories of highly emotional situations can be a lot less reliable than you think when you look at the percentages. Not EVERY person with an otherwise good memory will have a partially erroneous memory, but a certain percentage of them will.
The various links to the studies and descriptions of studies we’ve left in the thread are worth looking up if this area of cognitive psychology intrigues you.
karen marie
@Rafer Janders: Why are you so invested in telling people they can’t possibly remember what they clearly remember? “Studies say.” Are you fucking kidding me?
karen marie
@Comrade Mary: Nobody is saying this episode is the key to Romney’s character but as an American I am deeply offended that someone who is running for president was apparently so unaffected by that morning that even though he could have referred to his god damned book to refresh his memory (!) he just didn’t care enough.
It was a shocking and horrible event. I will never forget sitting in front of my TV with tears streaming down my face watching people jump to their fucking deaths.
How is he presidential material if he cannot even accurately fake what he was doing at the time of one of the biggest tragedies in American history?
I think it’s a big deal that he can’t keep his story straight about an event that was mortally devastating to so many people. What this tells me about Romney is he just doesn’t give a shit about what’s important or significant to other people, only himself. And that is something that I believe should affect people’s decision whether to vote for him or not.
P.S. I don’t give a rat’s ass about studies. That’s not what this is about. This is about Romney disrespecting what happened that day.
P.P.S. I normally avoid all 9/11 “remembrances” because even 11 years later it is just still too raw.
HRA
@Ruckus:
“Mittens lies. We all know that. The question I ask is why. Is it the start of senility or Alzheimers? Is he just pathological?
Looking back at my dad’s behavior he started to show signs of his Alzheimers around 65, same age as mittens. The signs were subtle but as time went on the behavior intensified and became more and more noticeable until there was no question at all about the diagnosis 8-9 yrs later.
This is another reason why his behavior is vitally important, even the small things. They may be nothing more than a horrible politician, but what if they aren’t?”
A few days back I said I wonder if he has memory loss on a thread here. Besides his turning and twisting of stories and events there was a press op where he said something like “If that’s what I said, then I must have said it” to a reporter’s question. That’s probably not as exact as it should be – but close. That got my attention and thoughts as to a probable memory loss problem.
SiubhanDuinne
@The Dangerman:
I have the immense privilege of knowing personally several of the people who were on Delta #15 and established the scholarship fund for Lewisporte NF students. I have had long phone conversations with the man who came up with the idea in the first place, and have hung out with the woman who administered the fund and who has, every year for the past ten years, awarded the scholarship to the top student in each graduating class. I know the young woman who was the first recipient (class of 2002), who received her M.D. from Memorial University of Newfoundland a couple of months ago. I know her mother. I wasn’t in Lewisporte or on that flight, but I do have a connection, and I guaranfuckingtee you that Mittens doesn’t.
It is hard to describe my fury on learning that anyone would try to credit Mitt (spit) Romney with any part of this immensely moving episode.
phoebes-in-santa fe
Speaking of 9/11 – as we are – I found this copy of how the US airspace was cleared, in time forward motion, that day, It’s fascinating.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttUkvGnKM2s&feature=player_detailpage
Heliopause
Echoing several other commenters, this is a giant nothingburger. It is beyond common for people, of good will or bad, to misremember details like this, even for events that are seared in my memory exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point. This fact is as well established as anything in climate science.
Mandalay
Romney’s two accounts are not really even in conflict. They could both be true.
Nitpicking on this level is ridiculous when there is so much to pillory Romney for.
tomvox1
@schrodinger’s cat: “BTW has anybody been reading Ambinder’s blog.”
Why would anyone do that? Ever.
DougJ
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yes, I have. It’s been shitty so far.
graves007
@eric:
Corrected:
This is just nutpicking….who amongst us can remember precisely where we were and what we were doing when we learned that, for the first time in American history,
a2 jumboaircraftaircrafts were flown intoan2 iconicskyscraperskyscrapers in an iconic city? Another flew into the Pentagon, the pinnacle of US security/military operations, a 4th that was probably destined for the White House but which was foiled by some really brave individuals who decided to sacrifice themselves. come on now, be fair.graves007
@eric:
Corrected:
This is just nutpicking….who amongst us can remember precisely where we were and what we were doing when we learned that, for the first time in American history,
a2 jumboaircraftaircrafts were flown intoan2 iconicskyscraperskyscrapers in an iconic city? Another flew into the Pentagon, the pinnacle of US security/military operations, a 4th that was probably destined for the White House but which was foiled by some really brave individuals who decided to sacrifice themselves. come on now, be fair.graves007
@eric:
Corrected:
This is just nutpicking….who amongst us can remember precisely where we were and what we were doing when we learned that, for the first time in American history,
a2 jumboaircraftaircrafts were flown intoan2 iconicskyscraperskyscrapers in an iconic city? Another flew into the Pentagon, the pinnacle of US security/military operations, a 4th that was probably destined for the White House but which was foiled by some really brave individuals who decided to sacrifice themselves. come on now, be fair.xian
I file this under things that reinforce a snowballing narrative, but not much else. Memory is a tricky thing and most people could be caught out in this way.