Much has been said about Barack Obama's clumsy chronology in crediting the 1965 "March to Freedom" in Selma with producing the interracial courtship of his parents that preceded his birth in 1961. The Obama campaign explained later that the candidate was speaking metaphorically and broadly.

However, I have not heard anyone question Hillary's description of the events of Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965:

Now, my friends, we must never forget the blows they took. Let's never forget the dogs and the horses and the hoses that were turned on them, driving them back, treating them not as human beings (full text here).

The intro to the Newshour on PBS report tonight even went so far as to show archival footage of police dogs attacking protesters and teenagers in the park dodging high-pressure hoses.

Indeed, Bull Connor was the master of the German Shepherd attack dogs, cattle prods and fire hoses. There is only one problem. Bull Connor was the villain of Birmingham. The news footage was of Birmingham--not Selma.

Hillary and the Newshour conflated Bloody Sunday with the images from Birmingham during the spring of 1963. In March of 1965, Sheriff Jim Clark and other local and state law enforcement confronted civil rights protesters on the Edmund Pettis Bridge with tear gas and mounted police. The images of Bloody Sunday are equally gruesome and the stories are just as harrowing--but they are two distinct events.

Perhaps I am being too fastidious? Perhaps Mrs. Clinton, like Senator Obama, was speaking in larger terms, compressing events into one dramatic narrative. But, after she exerted such effort to insert herself into the Selma commemoration, one could hope that the Senator from New York could have at least made a similar effort to get her facts straight.