Attempting to change the subject from the latest scandal over Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital,
conservatives have seized on new fodder for the narrative that Obama is
secretly out to destroy small businesses. Fox and Friends on Monday
morning aired a clip
from an Obama campaign speech in Roanoke, Virginia, in which he says,
“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else did
that.”

Some of you may have seen more than a few submissions on LL spouting this exact lie.

The sound bite soon reverberated throughout conservative media outlets. Fox News later ran the headline, “Obama Insults Small Business Owners,” and House Speaker John Boehner scoffed, “He said that because he has no idea what it takes to build or run a small business.”

Of course, Obama’s supposedly insulting comment is somewhat different in context. The full text of his speech,
rather than denigrate small business, challenged the idea that wealthy
and successful individuals have never benefited from government
programs:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to
create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you
to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.
The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research
created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the
Internet.

Without the context, Obama’s point that individual effort is
bolstered by community systems is completely lost. The idea is nothing
new; Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) made very similar comments that went viral in September of last year. Indeed, far from denigrating small business owners, Obama has cut taxes on small businesses 17 times.
Deliberately editing Obama out of context is not a new tactic for conservatives. In one blatant example, a recent Romney campaign ad
quoted Obama saying, “If we keep talking about the economy, we’re going
to lose,” a quote Obama was in fact using to criticize then-candidate
John McCain for his refusal to discuss the economic crisis in 2008.Just in case anyone wanted more proof that Fox News is basically a propaganda arm of the batshit insane neo-conservatives.