PBS posts incomplete Obama speech transcript, hiding gaffe (updated)

Television viewers who tuned in to hear President Obama's jobs speech Thursday evening got a bonus treat: some good old-fashioned revisionist history. Indeed, the president regailed us with the utterly incorrect story of how President Abraham Lincoln founded the Republican Party. Yes, Lincoln was a Republican, but he was hardly the first.**

During his remarks to the joint session of Congress, Obama remarked (emphasis mine):

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union. Founder of the Republican Party. But in the middle of a civil war, he was also a leader who looked to the future -- a Republican President who mobilized government to build the Transcontinental Railroad -- (applause) -- launch the National Academy of Sciences, set up the first land grant colleges. (Applause.) And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set.

But PBS, the non-profit taxpayer-subsidized television network, posted a noticeably altered transcript of President Obama's remarks to their website:

We all remember Abraham Lincoln as the leader who saved our Union.  But in the middle of a Civil War, he was also a leader who looked to the future - a Republican president who mobilized government to build the transcontinental railroad; launch the National Academy of Sciences; and set up the first land grant colleges.  And leaders of both parties have followed the example he set. 

And NBC's Chuck Todd really has to wonder where conservatives would get the crrrrrazy idea that there's a liberal media bias? 

The White House didn't even scrub the false remark from its own site, which suggests even the Obama administration has more integrity than PBS.  Yikes.

h/t American Thinker

**While we're on the topic of revisionist history, we'd be remiss if we didn't note that in his quest to abolish slavery, Abraham Lincoln repeatedly pointed to the Founding Fathers and their efforts to restrict the immoral practice -- a few oft-forgotten pieces of history that, when remembered today, makes you a "racist."

UPDATE - 12:00 p.m.

PBS is digging itself into a deeper hole.  They have just updated their transcript to accurately reflect President Obama's error.  While columnist Byron York suspects PBS is "lazy, not dishonest" by perhaps posting an initial draft of the president's remarks rather than an actual transcript of the remarks as delivered, there have been reports that PBS' website moderators have been deleting readers' comments pointing out their error.