Denver Post Removes ‘The Lord’ From Burris Story

January 7, 2009 | Filed Under Crime, Democrats/Leftists, Elections, Media Bias, News, Publius Contributor, Religion, Society/Culture, Warner Todd Huston |

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Denver Post seems to have decided that “the Lord” should not be allowed in its paper. In a January 5 report about Illinois Senator wannabe Roland Burris, the unwelcome Burris is quoted by the AP as saying “the Lord” had “ordained” that he get his Senate seat. At 3AM the Post had the full religious quote featured on its site, yet by 8PM the religious reference was purged from the story. One wonders why reference to the Lord was scrubbed from the report?

The report by David Espo of the Associated Press originally quoted Burris as saying that, “We are hoping and praying that they will not be able to deny what the Lord has ordained.” Obviously, Burris is convinced that God wants him to be a Senator. (The full AP report with the religious reference can be seen here.)

In the early morning hours of January 5 the Denver Post featured the full David Espo penned, AP story with the religious quote intact. I know this because quite a few websites, message boards and blogs made notice of the religious allusion and used the Denver Post link as their source for the quote. Even the nutcases at the extremist website Democratic Underground were mad that Burris said that God wanted him to be a Senator and pointed back to the Denver Post as the source of their ire. (Not that I care about their opinion, but just that it shows that the original Denver Post piece had the religious reference in it earlier in the day.)

As I said, however, by the evening of the 5th, the Denver Post updated the story cutting it short before the spot where Espo originally inserted Burris’ religious quote.

One has to wonder why the Denver Post felt that half a day later it was a good idea to censor Burris’ God talk? Was the Post trying to run flak for Burris, excising his religious reference so that Post readers wouldn’t have the same extremist reaction that the haters at the Democratic Underground had?

Some of the posters on DU were quite upset that Burris would fall on a religious reference. Poster olkaz said of Burris, “It sounds like Bush. It also reeks of mental illness.” One Webster Green slobbered the following: “The f_ _king “Lord” has ordained this a_ _hat to be a senator? :wtf: This dude needs a rubber room!” Well, needless to say, the inarticulate halfwits at DU had even more off color garbage to spew about Roland Burris, but you get the ugly picture.

As I searched the web for the Post’s version of the story, several Democrat leaning and liberal sites revealed how miffed they were that Burris invoked God in the story and nearly every reference I found linked back to the Denver Post story.

And yet… and yet by evening the Post had eliminated the talk of religion.

Quite a curious thing, unless you realize that the Post was belatedly trying to clean up Burris’ inconvenient religious expression for its readers. We must conclude that the Post was more interested in not upsetting the left than in reporting the news.

The left’s scrubbing bubbles strike again.

(Photo Credit: AP Photo/Rob Carr via the Denver Post)

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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston

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