As someone deeply concerned about our nation’s history of racism and the residual discrimination that continues to this day, it chokes me to write that I disagree with Mrs. Obama’s choice of words and PolitiFact’s imprimatur. When considering situations such as this I try to imagine a situation where someone of a different point of view articulates a similar but opposite argument, to wit, “white immigrants from western Europe built the White House.” It is as true as Mrs. Obama’s words which is to say not very as it suggests that they alone built it.

I would go on to say that I wouldn’t have had Mrs. Obama not make the statement. The point she was making was a much larger truth than the particular composition of a workforce two hundred years ago. Ignoring punctiliousness in support of that larger truth is a reasonable rhetorical choice. The sin was not hers, it was PolitiFact’s. Her statement would have lost no luster having been rated mostly true, which it was, and that rating would not have made PolitiFact appear as vacuous partisan hacks. The ‘True” rating did neither party any favors.