I see where the U.K. climate scientists are claiming that the leaked e-mails which seem to show them manipulating data to support their conclusion that global warming is caused by man were “taken out of context.”
And just yesterday, the mayor of Vallejo, California, said that his remark to the New York Times that gays will not go to heaven was “taken out of context.”
“Taken out of context” seems to be the new excuse for everything. Granted, many remarks are taken out of context and twisted around to make it sound like the speaker meant something else. The extreme right is currently circulating a couple of films about President Obama spliced together from remarks taken “out of context” without explaining what the context really was.
But it’s difficult to imagine how “sweep that study under the rug; it doesn’t support our conclusions” could mean anything other than “sweep that study under the rug.” Somehow I doubt that the e-mail really read something like “You know we can’t merely sweep that study under the rug just because it doesn’t support our conclusions.”
The Vallejo mayor was quoted by the Times as saying that gays are “committing sin and that sin will keep them out of heaven.” His defense, of course? It was taken out of context.
I really don’t think the New York Times would lift those words from a sentence which originally said “Some people say that gays are committing sin and that sin will keep them out of heaven, but I don’t believe that for a minute.”
But it must seem a useful excuse when you’re caught with your foot in your mouth or your hand in the cookie jar. I don’t know why Gov. Mark Sanford didn’t use it: “Sure, I said I was hiking the Appalachian trail, but you’re taking it out of context. And I admit I was really in Argentina boinking my girlfriend, but you’re taking that out of context, too.”
But why stop there? I’m sure when Gov. George Wallace shouted “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” those words were merely taken out of context. Or for that matter, imagine if Adolf Hitler had lived to go to trial at Nuremburg: “Yes, I know it looks like I ordered about 13 million people murdered – including six million Jews – but you guys are taking that all out of context.”