Newspaper That Printed Letter Calling For Obama’s Execution: Oops!

FILE - In this Dec. 3, 2014 file photo, President Barack Obama listens to a question during a meeting with leading CEOs to discuss ways to promote the economy and create jobs, at the Business Roundtable Headquarters ... FILE - In this Dec. 3, 2014 file photo, President Barack Obama listens to a question during a meeting with leading CEOs to discuss ways to promote the economy and create jobs, at the Business Roundtable Headquarters in Washington. President Barack Obama's push for trade deals with Asia and Europe has angered organized labor, setting up a tense fight with a key element of his voting coalition. But Obama wants to keep the anger to a simmer by pitching economic initiatives straight out of labor's working class agenda. The result is a complicated alliance that has never had a strong bond. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File) MORE LESS
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

A Pennsylvania newspaper apologized Thursday for running a letter to the editor that colorfully called for President Barack Obama’s execution.

The Daily Item, a newspaper based in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, ran a letter on Memorial Day titled “What is a Ramadi?” in which a local man criticized Obama’s approach to the Islamic State terror group.

“To the families of those fallen heros whose blood lies on the sands of Iraq; don’t you think it might be time to rise up against an administration who has adequately demonstrated their gross incompetence?,” Lewisburg, Pennsylvania resident W. Richard Stover wrote. “I think the appropriate, and politically correct, term is regime change. Forgive me for being blunt, but throughout history this has previously been accompanied by execution by guillotine, firing squad, public hanging.”

The Daily Item’s editorial board wrote Thursday that while “no bells went off” when the editor who placed Stover’s letter in the opinion pages first read it, the reference to execution should have been removed.

“Nearly a decade of provocative and divisive rhetoric may have inured us to language that calls the president of the United States ‘the coward-in-chief’ and the disrespectful use of the president’s first name…But we should have recognized that the final two metaphorical paragraphs of the Ramadi letter were inescapably an incitement to have the chief executive of our government executed. They should have been deleted,” the editorial read.

The editorial board added that publishing the letter as is wrongly implied the newspaper found Stover’s call for the President’s execution to be acceptable.

“The Daily Item apologizes for our failure to catch and remove the inappropriate paragraphs in the letter directed at President Obama,” the editorial read. “We will strive to do better in the future.”

h/t Politico

Latest Livewire

Notable Replies

  1. The idea that a near decade of hate-filled rhetoric makes one blase about calls for the execution of the President is scary.

    Besides, if someone wants to blame the President- they need to blame Bush not Obama.

  2. I call bullshit on the explanation. The Daily Item can’t be so busy that this just slipped by them.

  3. “But we should have recognized that the final two metaphorical paragraphs of the Ramadi letter were inescapably an incitement to have the chief executive of our government executed. They should have been deleted,” the editorial read."

    No, you effers – you should have notified the proper authorities and let them decide for themselves if they needed to pay the writer a visit, etc. Good Freaking Fuck - what is the matter with people like you??

  4. American journalism: RIP

  5. Not a single sentence in that letter should have been printed.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

72 more replies

Participants

Avatar for doremus_jessup Avatar for slbinva Avatar for estamm Avatar for amherstma Avatar for littlegirlblue Avatar for charliee Avatar for clunkertruck Avatar for artemisia Avatar for leftflank Avatar for opinionated1 Avatar for red_cabbage Avatar for meangreen Avatar for cvilledem Avatar for Lacuna-Synecdoche Avatar for kenstarr Avatar for gr Avatar for astralfire Avatar for creetch Avatar for tomj Avatar for dickweed Avatar for cincypix Avatar for occamsrazor2 Avatar for acornsprout Avatar for ljb860

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: