What does a misattributed quote on the new Oval Office rug say about Obama?
Best Opinion: American Thinker, New York The petty controversy: There’s a mistake on the Oval Office’s new presidential rug. The beige carpet, which made its debut prior to President Barack Obama’s Iraq address last week, includes the presidential seal and five embroidered quotes attributed to Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Unfortunately, the King quote — “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” — doesn’t belong to him. The saying comes from 19th-century Unitarian minister and abolitionist Theodore Parker, whose words King (and Obama) often repeated. The reaction: This “error perfectly encapsulates the shallowness of Barack Obama’s intellect and his lack of rigor,” says Thomas Lifson in American Thinker. “Underfoot, literally, there is woven into his background a prominent vein of phoniness.” Everybody, just relax, says Dan Amira in New York magazine. Parker never said those exact