NEW YORK – 
Mike Huckabee’s remarks about Natalie Portman’s out-of-wedlock pregnancy weren’t incendiary—until Eric Hananoki got his hands on them and found just the right snippet to get the media fired up. Howard Kurtz on how partisan groups are deploying sound bites to discredit public figures.
Mike Huckabee, whose nonstop book-flacking is keeping him on the political radar, was doing a routine radio interview when the talk briefly turned to Natalie Portman.
Seattle host Michael Medved questioned how the 29-year-old actress could tout her pregnancy at the Oscars when she had not yet married her fiancé. The once-and-maybe-future presidential candidate replied that it was “troubling” to see “a Natalie Portman or some other Hollywood starlet who boasts” of having a child out of wedlock, because “there aren’t really a lot of single moms out there who are making millions of dollars every year for being in a movie.”
And then—nothing happened. But three days later, in a glass-sheathed building atop Washington’s Buddha Bar, Eric Hananoki, a 27-year-old with a growth of stubble, discovered the audio on his computer. At 5:41 p.m., he posted a blog item for the liberal advocacy group Media Matters, declaring
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