I have to confess, I seldom listen to Barack Obama's speeches and I don't rush to tune into his press conferences. Dude just isn't as entertaining as the last two presidents.
But I caught the end of last night's presser, just because. As usual, cool rational answers in complete sentences. And he will actually answer a question most of the time, though he's a sucker for a long preamble. And he's up three grade levels from the last President!
Notable at this conference were three liberally-biased reporters, that is reporters with obvious, glaring liberal biases. He even took questions from two of them. The oddballs were Sam Stein from the Huffington Post (took a question) and Ed Schultz, a Talk Radio host from Air America (didn't take a question) and of course, room fixture Helen Thomas. You can conclude that this is the beginning of the end of bipartisonship, that Obama is going to fill the room with his own Jeff Gannons; but I'm thinking differently here. Yesterday was the day that Obama disappointed liberals everywhere with the announcement that he wasn't going to persue any troublesome war crimes charges against the previous administration. Perhaps he was hoping for an angry question, so he could show the Limbaughies that he was their President too.
One question he DID dodge, interestingly, was Helen Thomas'. I don't have the transcript in front of me but it was along the lines of "Do you know of any middle-eastern states that have nuclear weapons". Obama didn't say, because officially we don't know that Isreal has them. If we did, they'd probably have to be open to inspections like Iraq and North Korea. Policy is they MIGHT have nuclear weapons.
So kudos to Helen Thomas, who shows no sign of stopping being a troublemaker just because Bush isn't president any more.
***Update*** Sam Stein asked a question about the war crimes thing, but the response was so measured ("We should prosecute crimes, and I'll look into this one, but I'm inclined not to dwell on the past") that I had simply forgotten it. Oh, and I missed it, but Obama took another question from Fox News.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Press Conference Fun! ***Update***
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4 comments:
I have no problem with liberal reporters given the chance to ask a question or being allowed at a presser. We all know for instance that Ed Schultz is thoroughly a far left liberal. It's the ones that PRETEND they aren't liberal that I distrust...like, say, the Washington Post! (seriously, why are we asking the POTUS about an idiot like A-Rod??)
I also like that Huffy Post was there. That shows that the/an establishment is beginning to take Internet reporters and writers seriously. THAT is good for ME!
Oh, but I disagree that Obama spoke well. He gave nothing but double talk, gave no real specifics on anything and did not seem to really ahve a command of the real situation. He sounded like the kid reading his term paper in front of the class...
"This economy is in bad shape and we have important things to do. We are doing important things, so that you will all feel better about the economy. These important things are really, really important, too. That is why we are doing them.
Next question?"
And The One still continues to pre-select which reporters he will call on. Perhaps that is why there weren't any hard questions asked. Reporters are being shown that if you want to be pre-selected/called on, you better keep in line.
That's so adorable how you think that Obama's the first president to do that, and that the left-biased reporters weren't worried about their jobs if they asked Bush tough questions.
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