Background: Mitt Romney made a campaign speech today that used the WaWa convenience store franchise’s touch screen sandwich menu feature to make the point of how more cool and efficient the private sector is, when compared to the government. MSNBC doctored the clip to make it look like Romney was merely astounded that we have touch screen sandwich menus now*. Lots of people called MSNBC out on it. Hijinks are now going to ensue.

It’s all going to go entertainingly bad for MSNBC (and every enthusiast that uncritically believed the aforementioned doctored clip); and yes, I’m sure that everybody reading this is all broken up about that, too. But that’s not the point! You know what the point is? It’s that… do you know WHY people were able to debunk the story just in time for it to embarrassingly explode all over MSNBC? It’s because somebody in the audience was recording the speech.

WHAT I TELL YOU THREE TIMES IS TRUE: ALWAYS KEEP A VIDEO CAMERA WITH YOU WHEN YOU ATTEND A POLITICAL EVENT. ALWAYS KEEP A VIDEO CAMERA WITH YOU WHEN YOU ATTEND A POLITICAL EVENT. ALWAYS KEEP A VIDEO CAMERA WITH YOU WHEN YOU ATTEND A POLITICAL EVENT.

ALWAYS.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Which is, by the way, actually very cool. And they didn’t really exist until quite recently.