October 24, 2021

Yeah, this needs fact-checking.

 

Reuters Fact-Check is on the job:
A hand gesture U.S. president Joe Biden made during a CNN town hall in Baltimore on Oct. 21 was in reference to corporations not paying taxes. Some social media users are isolating a screenshot of the moment from this context to claim it resembles a white supremacist symbol.
Could somebody fact check whether Reuters has a sense of humor? It's pretty obvious that this humor is intended to mock all the other accusations that the "OK" sign is a white power expression. 

Reuters should not insinuate that the gesture is taken out of context to be deceptive. The context, laboriously stated in the fact check, is perfectly evident from the words printed on screen!

36 comments:

robother said...

How much facts could a fact-checker check, if a fact-checker could check facts?

Lurker21 said...

If the "fact check" is more egregious than the supposed error, does that make the original statement true according to the "double negative makes a positive" principle?

R C Belaire said...

So...I guess it's OK to use the OK hand gesture again? Good to know!

Most media people are hopeless schills.

wendybar said...

THIS is why we point and laugh at them. It never meant what Progressives said it supposedly means...it means ok to most people. There are pictures of all politicians including Saint Obama doing this. The left got everybody up in a tizzy over it, because they could use it to divide people. The progressives THRIVE on RACISM and dividing people by race.

typingtalker said...

Ann wrote, "Could somebody fact check whether Reuters has a sense of humor?"

Could somebody fact check whether Reuters has a fact checker?

cubanbob said...

Over analyzed. Biden is gesturing zero. I presume he is also including himself in that group.

rhhardin said...

I no longer can find my internet photo dictionary of French hand gestures, speaking of power symbols.

Joe Biden, America's Putin said...

I already know, base on 4 decades of his racist utterances - that Joe Biden is a White Supremacist.

Now I know he's a big zero.

retail lawyer said...

Biden recalls the gesture for "zero". So there's that!

Achilles said...

Joe Biden has been n avowed racist his entire life.

That is why they had to manufacture all those votes in blue cities.

Black people actually hate him and would never vote for him.

Howard said...

Symbols mean many things... it's all about context. It is a white power gang sign. It's also a basketball 3-point basket symbol.

JAORE said...

But context is not just important, it is EVERYTHING... to the left.

Useful or not useful is the primary contextual test.

Subtle? Not a bit.

Critter said...

Just another struggle for control of the narrative. What else do journalists do anymore?

Mike of Snoqualmie said...

Two wrongs don't make a right, but two Wrights can make an airplane.

Reuters is part of the Lie-Stream Media. Their job is to dis conservatives/Republicans, cover up all fascist/Democrat wrongs and praise same fascist/Democrats to the sky. Thus, when DJT uses the OK-sign, it's a code for all neo-Nazis and Klu Klux Klansers to come forward and take their rightful place. But, when Creepy Joe does it, it means literally zero, because Creepy Joe is a big fat zero.

My pronouns are "My Imperial Galactic Overlord." Not "My Galactic Imperial Overlord" or "My Overlord of the Galactic Imperium." Anyone who doesn't get it right is an overlord-phobic hater and must be ostracized from all the benefits of leftist civilization. Such as those benefits are.

Mr. Majestyk said...

The real question is: Why does Biden have his white supremacist sign at his eye? He is not making some subtle or one-off statement about white supremacy. He is signaling that he views the entire world through a white supremacist lens.

Oh, two more points. First, Let's Go Brandon (the disabled guy). Second, Fuck Joe Biden (the mentally disabled president).

Lucien said...

Every politician should be asked whether they have ever made a voluntary donation to the US Treasury, and if so, how much? Then they should be asked whether they disapprove of people and companies that pay what they owe in taxes, but not a penny more.

(And the usual confusion of wealth (a stock) with income (a flow) becomes even more unintelligible when presented in questions like the appropriate income tax rate for "the wealthy". Lionel Messi and Naomi Osaka may well have higher incomes than Warren Buffett in any given year.)

Yancey Ward said...

"Mr. President, what is your IQ?"

Amadeus 48 said...

Everyone knows he was referring to his old boss Barack "Zero" Obama with this witty hand gesture. Joe is always running on empty.

Was the Biden presidency implicit in the Obama presidency? I think so. There is a well-known trope called "going from bad to worse" that regularly appears in the Democrat Party. We are living it.

Better stock up.

BUMBLE BEE said...

I should think Joe's "mentor" would have advised Joe to be flashing white power signs often. Not many Americans have been as close to the Klan leadership as Joe Biden. The word "imbued" applies.

Sally327 said...

I don't think we can ever be sure what Biden thinks he is communicating by words of gestures. He mostly seems confused or distracted and hardly ever fully engaged in the particular moment.

Chris Lopes said...

So progressives let a group of jokesters on 4chan redefine a culturally accepted hand gesture (FFS, there are pictures of literally everyone in public life making it) into a symbol of white supremacy. I suspect they (progressives) were just looking for something else to be outraged about. No one seriously thinks Biden was flashing a white supremacy sign. That's just stupid.

Clyde said...

Fact: President* Cornholio needs TP for his bunghole. His clenched-fists posture looked so much like Beavis that he probably owes Mike Judge some royalties.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Where I come from, doing that could get your eye poked out...

Leland said...

If the question is "What percentage of income do you believe is fair for the wealthy to pay their "fair share"?", then is Biden giving a gesture of zero? As in the wealthy need pay zero income to be fair? If not, what other meaning is there for that symbol to that question? Is Reuters suggesting Biden response was corporations should not pay taxes? That would be a new stance by Biden, and if we are fact checking, I'm certain corporations pay taxes.

Iman said...

Biden is self-identifying as an asshole. It’s one of the few, honest things he has done in his first year as ROTUS.

henge2243 said...

It is obviously meant to be the White power sign. Why?

Context: if Biden meant to flash the White power sign, which he did, context is not important. Dog whistles are dog whistles for a reason. Only those that are meant to hear them can hear them. To make the sign covertly, he makes it out of context but he makes it.

Dog whistle: Tim Young has "Let's go Brandon" on his Twitter feed which loudly proclaims his racism. He heard the dog whistle. The black man who asked the question did not show any offense on camera because he didn't hear the dog whistle.

Context II: He made it when a black man asked him a question. His racism is so strong, he can't help himself.

The gesture itself: if he meant to make the zero (0) sign, he would have curled all of his fingers over like the "O" not like the "OK".

Joe Smith said...

We should take everything at face value.

There is no nuance.

There is no humor.

Biden is therefore a racist asshole.

QED

Quaestor said...

Could somebody fact check whether Reuters has a fact checker?

Could somebody fact check whether the Reuters fact checker knows a fact from the void between Resident Biden's ears?

rehajm said...

Remember not long ago the behavior of the President was important? It was important a President looks and acts Presidential. A President not looking and acting Presidential was a reason to remove a President from the Presidency.

Here, The President looks and acts like a fucking child.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Howard,

Symbols mean many things... it's all about context. It is a white power gang sign. It's also a basketball 3-point basket symbol.

Also "the circle game." Also the boring old OK sign, which has been around forever. Also a zero.

So if a white NBA player uses this in a game, is it white-supremacy-fu or just the three-point sign? Context, remember!

Biden and Harris have now both used it in public. So, IIRC, did Obama.

mikee said...

One horrible aspect of dementia is that for a while, the person with dementia knows they are experiencing cognitive loss and almost universally will prevent it being a problem for them as long as possible by using behaviors such as setpiece phrases to cover up aphasia, or limiting their interactions or travel to prevent confusion, or telling the same stories over and over. My own mother is currently at the point where she says, "Long story short" whenever she loses her place in a conversation, and she just closes off the topic and jumps to another subject like the weather. Joe is here now, and his frequent "Hey, man!" and "C'mon!" of the campaign can be seen as evidence of how he avoided confused responses for about a year.

After this phase of knowing you have dementia, your dementia increases to the point where you don't know you have it. And you can't hide it any more. Joe is almost there, God bless him.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has no such excuse for her behaviors.

mikee said...

One horrible aspect of dementia is that for a while, the person with dementia knows they are experiencing cognitive loss and almost universally will prevent it being a problem for them as long as possible by using behaviors such as setpiece phrases to cover up aphasia, or limiting their interactions or travel to prevent confusion, or telling the same stories over and over. My own mother is currently at the point where she says, "Long story short" whenever she loses her place in a conversation, and she just closes off the topic and jumps to another subject like the weather. Joe is here now, and his frequent "Hey, man!" and "C'mon!" of the campaign can be seen as evidence of how he avoided confused responses for about a year.

After this phase of knowing you have dementia, your dementia increases to the point where you don't know you have it. And you can't hide it any more. Joe is almost there, God bless him.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, has no such excuse for her behaviors.

Greg The Class Traitor said...

Howard said...
Symbols mean many things... it's all about context. It is a white power gang sign. It's also a basketball 3-point basket symbol.

Really, Howie?

So, which "white power gangs" use it as their "sign"? When did they start using it that way?

All "white power gang" members breath. Does that mean that breathing is a "white power gang sign", because all the "white power gang" members do it? How does one distinguish between people doing what all other people do, and people doing something unique and special?

Nice said...

The best case scenario is it's the equivalent of a hot-mike. I seem to remember President Reagan going on a radio show or some such, and saying something in the vicinity of: "I'm ready to bomb the entire world" ---which angered the No-Nukes crowd. Reagan had a kind of Vaudeville humor, and did it with a wink and a smile, so you knew it wasn't serious.

Biden's gaffes, at this stage, aren't the least bit Reagan-charming, humorous or endearing. Trying to find any Reagan in Biden is clearly a fruitless endeavor.





Chris Lopes said...

"It is a white power gang sign."

Actually it's a 4chan mindfuck perpetrated for their own infantile amusement. Progressives picked up on it because it gave them something else to be aggrieved about. The rest of us normal people recognize it as just an "ok" or a zero sign. We shouldn't be letting shit head assholes redefine our cultural symbols.

Biff said...

People who go around asserting that the "A-OK" sign is a "white power" sign should be mocked, ridiculed, humiliated, and generally shunned as the corrosive nincompoops that they really are.