John Kasich's New Ad Features 'Journalist' Who REALLY Screwed Up: Misused Nazi Phrase Emblazoned Over The Gates Of Auschwitz

Mytheos Holt Admitted He Was A Dolt

 CINCINNATI (TDB) -- The star of Republican John Kasich's latest television ad apologized to his entire college campus for comparing the extermination camp's "Arbeit Macht Frei" -- the phrase millions passed while being herded to the gas chambers -- to Obama's "Yes we can."

Mytheos Holt publicly had to retract his words, which appeared in a column in the Wesleyan Argus not quite two years ago.  Now Holt -- who openly admitted he was a dolt -- is going to pop up in a John Kasich TV spot that attacks Gov. Ted Strickland for false and misleading ads.  Holt claimed in his apology that he wrongly thought "Arbeit Macht Frei" was simply a German campaign slogan.  His knowledge gap proved offensive and disgusting -- it's a phrase forever associated with murder, starvation, slave labor, brutal experiments on children, and ovens, those awful ovens, the soul stealers.  The Daily Bellwether has the apology here:

Holt apologizes

By Mytheos Holt

"A few hours after my column ran this Tuesday (“Mytheology: Wesleyan Viewed from the Right: It's a Brand New Day,” Nov. 11, 2008, Volume CXLIV, Number 19) I received an angry e-mail from a friend about my usage of the slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei.”

I was under the impression that he was reacting against my implied comparison between two arguably totalitarian slogans, so I replied back snappishly, but he then informed me that it had been written over the gates at Auschwitz. I was shocked and horrified to learn this, and so I apologize for using that phrase. I had intended it merely as a reference to what I thought was an oft-used campaign slogan in Nazi Germany, NOT to imply that Obama was on the verge of committing genocide.

I realize that I was wrong not to research the phrase. If anyone should have done so, it would be a half-Jewish student whose mother's side of the family was fortunate enough to escape Europe before Hitler could get to them.  This was an extreme comparison, and I am deeply sorry to anyone who was offended by the column.

Anthony Fossacecca at Ohio Daily Blog says Holt is a rookie partisan Hack who has been in journalism only since the Spring. Fossacecca didn't know about the death camp furor, which The Daily Bellwether discovered after reading Holt's columns in a campus newspaper.  Here's Fossacecca:

"Republican Gubernatorial Candidate John Kasich is about to launch a new ad later today attacking Governor Ted Strickland for running false and misleading ads. In the spot, the Kasich campaign cites one source for their attack on Strickland : National Review blogger Mytheos Holt. And Holt is hardly a credible source. Until last spring, the poor kid was writing for The Wesleyan Argus in an ultra-conservative column called "Mytheology" before he graduated and grabbed a desk at NRO. He's also grabbed coffee for folks at Accuracy in Media and shadowy Bush group, Freedom's Watch.
With a crack resume like that, it's no wonder Team Kasich swooped in to use him as the only credible journalist willing to shill for the team.
In the spot, he's quoted calling Ted's spots "blatant misrepresentation of the truth.... ridiculous... not one sentence in context."
With youthful exaggerations like that, perhaps he should have run for State Treasurer."