NBC gets caught with hand in cookie jar

One of the annual treats of Father's Day is watching the last day of the U.S. Open golf tournament. NBC's Johnny Miller is one of golf's best commentators and the coverage is always excellent.

Today - with the Open being played outside Washington, D.C. - they opened their coverage with an attempt at patriotism, by showing the Pledge of Allegiance in a series of clips, with each group saying a few words. However, after the clip of people saying, "One nation," they went immediately to a clip of people saying "indivisible."

Of course, they edited out the words, "Under God."

The outrage directed at NBC must have been loud and immediate, because a short time later, anchor announcer Dan Hicks was forced to read a statement saying, “We began our coverage of this final round just about three hours ago and when we did it was our intent to begin the coverage of this U.S. Open Championship with a feature that captured the patriotism of our national championship being held in our nation’s capital for the third time. Regrettably, a portion of the Pledge of Allegiance that was in that feature was edited out. It was not done to upset anyone and we’d like to apologize to those of you who were offended by it.”

It seems like a small matter, but in fact it's a great insight into the mindset of media elites. It's easy to imagine a group sitting around an NBC editing room, and someone says, "You know, let's just take out that 'under God' part so we don't offend anyone." And because the liberals who dominate the media share similar mindsets, no one in the room even thought to say, "Um, aren't we going to offend millions of people who believe in God and think He should be recognized when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance?"

I've been part of the media, and I know the mindset. And even if someone thought it, they wouldn't dare say it because their colleagues would consider them some kind of backwoods Bible-thumping rube.

Pounded by phone calls, NBC tried the old "We apologize to anyone who was offended," defense, but the fact is, they did what they believed was right when they edited out the words.