Obama says they'd always intended for HBO to broadcast Robinson

By GottaLaff

Was it one of our commenters who attended the event and said that the audio of gay bishop Gene Robinson's prayer was garbled? So was it, indeed, a tech issue, or as Josh Earnest's message (below) suggests, an "error" by HBO (who blamed Team Obama for the omission)? HBO says it wasn't them:

Contacted Sunday night by AfterElton.com concerning the exclusion of Robinson's prayer, HBO said via email, "The producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show."

Uncertain as to whether or not that meant that HBO was contractually prevented from airing the pre-show, we followed up, but none of the spokespeople available Sunday night could answer that question with absolute certainty.

However, it does seem that the network's position is that they had nothing to do with the decision.

Via AMERICAblog:

“We had always intended and planned for Rt. Rev. Robinson’s invocation to be included in the televised portion of yesterday’s program. We regret the error in executing this plan – but are gratified that hundreds of thousands of people who gathered on the mall heard his eloquent prayer for our nation that was a fitting start to our event.” -- PIC communications director Josh Earnest

At least the Obama people think it important enough to weigh in, and that's a good thing.

Amen.