This story is so weird; it exemplifies the paranoia over at the White House over anything G-A-Y, particularly regarding the President’s current illogical-but-politically safe position on marriage equality. We have to roll the story out before getting to the meat of it.
Melody Barnes, Obama’s senior domestic policy aide, recently gave a talk at Boston College; she indicated not only her personal opinion on marriage equality (she’s for it), she provided insight on WH policy. Apparently her answer was not from the script and the White House freaked and denied Barnes said anything about her views.
Reached late Monday evening, a White House official who spoke on condition of anonymity said that Barnes was not discussing “her personal views on marriage equality or other issues.”
Paul Sousa, Founder of Equal Rep was at the talk and told Sam Stein of Huff Post that Barnes indeed shared her viewpoint on marriage equality. So that meant someone wasn’t telling the truth.
But the Barnes talk had been taped. What happened next was extremely bizarre—persons unidentified in Obama White House, home of our “fierce advocate”—told Boston College that it had final say on whether this tape would be released at all. John @ Americablog:
by 3:40PM Tuesday, November 10, the White House was given a copy of the video by BC, and was informed that the school’s policy was to give the speaker the choice to release or suppress video of their talks at the school. The White House, rather than refusing to be the ultimate censor of the publication of the video that had already caused quite a stir, and rather than simply giving BC the permission to publish the video on the spot, accepted the video, and its role as censor, and didn’t get back to the school for two whole days. It was only this morning that Kenyon says the White House told Boston College that it could release the Barnes video.
Why did it take the White House two days to decide whether it would permit a private university to release a video of a public event involving a senior White House official, a video that we now know the White House had in its possession the entire time?
...The appropriate response from the White House, when a private university asks for permission to release a video of a White House employee speaking on the record at a public meeting, is not “send us the video, so we can see it, and decide if we’re going to censor its release. And in the meantime, do censor it for at least a few days.” (Which leads to some fascinating First Amendment issues, at the very least.)
The Obama White House was trapped in yet another public “gaffe” over its preposterous dealings re: LGBT rights because of Melody Barnes’s statement. Since it couldn’t give a rational explanation for withholding the tape’s release, the anonymous paranoid Obama officials decided they would hold on to it until the news “dead drop” on Friday, when the MSM goes to sleep for the weekend. Unfortunately, the Internet never sleeps, peeps.
The Advocate obtained the tape from the college’s communications department and transcribed it, so there wasn’t any question about what Barnes told the students at Boston College. More below the fold.