Zombie Media Still Fighting the Last Gotcha War

Of all the bad questions at Tuesday's primetime press conference (and you can vote for your favorite here), the one that best illuminates why the White House press corps asks such bad questions came from a Washington Times reporter, who wondered how much President Obama has "personally wrestled with the morality" of funding stem-cell research.

It's a legit question. But given the range of overwhelming crises our country faces right now, it really seemed to be fighting the last gotcha war: What the Wash Times actually wanted to know was whether Obama agonizes over this issue as much as George W. Bush (with a notable lack of believability) claimed to do.

Like, who cares? Clearly, the stem cells from which this press corps was hatched have been genetically engineered to thrive only at Dubya's level, and therefore the media isn't advanced enough yet to ask questions that don't elicit pompous moralizing or misdirect the public interest--much less to challenge the intellect and resolve of a sitting president.

For nearly an hour, Barack Obama was up there playing ping-pong by himself. It was as if Tiger Woods (as Will Ferrell's George W. dubs Obama) had stopped by to play in a foursome of local dentists and we--the rest of the country--had to wait around the greens until the dentists caught up on every hole.

Doesn't this Beltway press realize that we have a new president who can speak in complete sentences, knows his stuff, and, on top of that, is even willing to try to level with us about the momentous changes the country needs? And don't these White House correspondents realize that millions of Americans might be way ahead of them, having pored through long stories or complicated blog posts full of unfamiliar jargon like "credit default swaps" and "collateralized debt obligations" to try to understand why their jobs have disappeared and their homes declined in value overnight? Those people were waiting to get real information from President Obama about how he was going to dig us out of this mess, and wanted specific reassurances as to how the most expensive part of his plan, the bank bailout, would work.

But no--not a single question about the bailout was asked. And there were plenty of good, hard questions they could have asked of Obama, especially following the skeptical grilling Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Fed chair Ben Bernanke got earlier that very day from the House Financial Services Committee.

For starters, the press might have asked the president why Geithner's plan gives away more than two trillion dollars in Federal Reserve funds and credits (all of it ultimately taxpayer money) to the very same financial firms that brought us to this impasse in the first place, over and above the $750 billion in TARP funds already handed to them by Congress? Why is it that whenever the government holds a meeting to discuss saving the nation from a second Great Depression a Goldman Sachs alum is usually in the room? (Something only Rep. Maxine Waters asked at the hearings, albeit rather clumsily, winning a wince of incomprehension from Geithner.) Why are there no non-Wall Street economists like Joe Stiglitz, Dean Baker, or Paul Krugman on Obama's "team of rivals"? And if the banks are going to price these toxic assets themselves before Geithner sells them to hedge funds, why, after all that's happened, would any investor trust the value the banks place on these securities?

Instead, NBC's Chuck Todd may have topped his last major dumb question (asking press secretary Robert Gibbs in January whether Obama would "veto" the stimulus bill "if it didn't have Republican support?") by wondering, Why hasn't Obama asked the public to sacrifice something in this economic equivalent to war?

Is Chuck combing his goatee backward so its roots are growing into his brain or something? Never mind that having to choose between paying the rent or paying for health insurance seems like a pretty big sacrifice to most people. Or that the bank bailout money comes directly from the people already. The question actually seemed to be a version of the lame Republican talking point asserting that there is a "Bush/Obama spending policy," worded in such a way as to tempt Obama to repeat Bush's famous inanity after 9/11 that our only patriotic duty was to "go shopping." (Even Todd's MSNBC colleague Chris Matthews mumbled something after the presser about not knowing what Todd was talking about.)

The most talked-about dumb question was from CNN's Ed Henry, who asked Obama why it took him a few days after he learned about the AIG bonuses to publicly demonstrate his outrage. Obama swatted away that gotcha by saying "I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak," ending the exchange with a surprise rhetorical twist that made CNN look terribly dim--O, Henry.

Of course, there were a few smart questions. As Katrina points out, an Ebony reporter was the only one to bring the economic crisis home to real people, asking about tent cities full of homeless children. The Agence France-Presse question about whether it will be more difficult to achieve peace with Netanyahu's new hardline government, was a perfectly good one, too. Coming at the end, it gave Obama the chance to give a soaring answer about how, like the Mideast peace negotiations, economic recovery demands persistence, calm, and rational thought--making the reporters by comparison look even more querulous and timid, fixated as they were on short-term cosmetics instead of long-term crisis-solving.

When it comes to spending money to lift the middle class, much less the poor, the press seems to be composed of dogged budget hawks. But when it comes to giving away at least twice as much to Wall Street and the banks, this White House press corps can't seem to find the WMD (Wealth Multiplication Dole). Is there a stem-cell treatment for a Groundhog Day media?

Comments (49)

1. Excellent article.

   My impression was that the press corp wasn't comfortable asking any questions that wouldn't continue to dumb-down the network morning shows... forgetting, perhaps, that Obama prefers people to be intellectually engaged.

   I also got the feeling that Obama's team had advised everyone before hand that we should keep this conference rather subdued and sober to keep the panic level across the country under control.

   Overall... I think they all juggled the parameters with precision and poignancy...

   Posted by ttr at 03/25/2009 @ 8:14pm

2. The main stream media needs to step up and help make our nation more literate and promote lifelong learning. Stop with this bs news that the average American sees each night at 5:00. The crap with celebrities has to stop, too. Who cares? Let them act, perform, write...whatever their talent might be. We shouldn't care what goes on in their lives from day to day. We need to care more about the future of our nation.

   I thought President Obama might need to speak in layman's terms to reach the average American. But after thinking about it...why doesn't the average American put some effort towards seeking the knowledge to understand the state that we are currently in? I can't even begin to wrap my brain around all of this. But I am trying to read as much as I can to figure it out. Or at least be able to discuss it with other people so we can learn together.

   I encourage and challenge more people to rise up and better yourself through real knowledge.

   Posted by beach.pea at 03/25/2009 @ 8:38pm

3. Dear "beach.pea,"

   I believe you would love the article by Anna Quindlen in this week's NEWSWEEK (of March 30, 2009), entitled "Dollars and Sense: It would be so much easier for Americans to get a handle on the financial crisis if they knew what it was about."

   At the same time, I don't believe we, the ignorant public, are entirely to blame. For the last several decades, the big investment banks, now joined at the hip with commercial banks, have purposefully made their strategies for generating more money from money obscure and bewilderingly complex - both to keep us confused, and to forestall effective regulation.

   Unfortunately, too few people in government understand or appreciate the need for financial regulation. They have swallowed the notion that all wealth comes from money, which makes it seem reasonable to "relax" financial rules to permit creative new ways to do this. But I believe it is simply not possible to make generating money from money more profitable by means of any scheme, no matter how clever or complicated it appears to be, without deceptively inflating the value of the money. The result is a bubble. The banks can keep putting off the day on which we must discover the pitifully low (perhaps negative) value of their assets for as long as they can, but this day must come eventually.

   I believe we should all put off the inevitable and do a public audit of these "troubled" banks. They should not be given yet another opportunity to pass their inflated assets on to yet another ignorant buyer - especially if WE are this buyer. We must demand to know what we are buying before we buy it.

   In the meantime, we need to invest our money in the real sources of wealth: education and infrastructure. If this foundation is solid, the banks will soon be, too.

   Posted by JakobFabian at 03/25/2009 @ 9:26pm

4. Oops, please revise what I wrote: I believe we should STOP putting off the inevitable and do a public audit of these "troubled" banks.

   Thank you.

   Posted by JakobFabian at 03/25/2009 @ 10:05pm

5. Jakob, I agree

   And to your point of doing a public audit of these "troubled" banks, isn't that just what the Treasury said it was doing a few weeks ago - stress testing the banks to tell those that were likely to be viable from those that were essentially insolvent and needed to be taken over (a la FDIC)? We need to ask what became of the stress testing: when are we are going to get the results? My recollection is that we were told that the stress testing was to take a week or two. It's time for the government to tell us the results. Instead we are getting a new bank rescue plan - sans information on what was supposed to be a cold-eyed look into the banks.

   PBMD

   Posted by pbmd at 03/25/2009 @ 10:09pm

6. i would like to author to explain why the washington times reporter's question, regarding the morality of stem cell research, was "legit."

   Posted by darladoon at 03/25/2009 @ 10:24pm

7. Remember when we could watch the news or read the newspaper and the reporters would just tell us what was happening instead of what they think we should think is happening. Remember when news organizations would do investigative reporting from local papers and TV stations to the major news outlets? Remember when we had JOURNALISTS before there were talking heads. What happened? Where did all the news people go? I mean the real ones not these ones we have now. How do we get them back? I miss them.

   Posted by bascaville at 03/25/2009 @ 10:25pm

8. This was NOT a press conference, this was a speech with planted questions to distract us again from the reality of the continual FAILURES of the administration and congress to gainfully affect the recession.

   NO ONE dares to actually question Obamanation and certainly not the Demoncrats on their total mismanagement of not just the economy, but all the failing policies and ignored problems that keep growing and growing! To pretend it was anything other than the obvious farce it was is just ignorant!

   Posted by comancheamerican at 03/25/2009 @ 10:41pm

9. "This was NOT a press conference, this was a speech with planted questions to distract us again from the reality of the continual FAILURES of the administration"

   the only people who can make this claim are even further to the left than i am.

   but you? you, nor the rest of the right wing, can.

   Posted by darladoon at 03/25/2009 @ 10:57pm

10. unless, of course, you are an honest libertarian, which you are most definitely not.

    Posted by darladoon at 03/25/2009 @ 10:58pm

11. They didn't ask tough questions, because: 1. The questions are planted by Obamas team to make him look smarter than he actually is. 2. He is the candidate the media backed 3. He is black and they want the first black president to succeed. 4. Because they have no guts and there are no more journalists left. 5. He doesn't really know what he is doing, therefore they don't want to embarrass him because he is black.

    Posted by apoorspic at 03/25/2009 @ 11:28pm

12. "They didn't ask tough questions, because..."

    that's funny, because a far worse, and plainly more accurate, observation could have been made of bush's press conferences. i mean, are you living in some sort of time warp? do you have any idea what was asked of bush in his first days? or how about after 9.11, and in the run-up to the invasion of iraq?

    heck, just about *everything* george ever "accomplished" was aided and abetted by a ridiculously anti-intellectual press.

    while the questions asked of obama weren't what socialists, like myself, would have asked of him, the press was still largely skeptical of obama, and nowhere near conciliatory and timid as they were of bush. i think any reasonable person can concur that today's press conference contained a relatively healthy dose of self-awarness, at least in part because the press remember how vacant and absent they were during bush's tenure.

    Posted by darladoon at 03/25/2009 @ 11:38pm

13. "2. He is the candidate the media back"

    all one has to do in order to deflate this argument is point out that the media also backed bush.

    Posted by darladoon at 03/25/2009 @ 11:47pm

14. darla,

    had ms. clinton been the victor,

    who do you think her economic "team" would be?

    Posted by frosty zoom at 03/26/2009 @ 12:45am

15. If the Washington Times is owned by the King of the Universe...why doesn't He fix this mess?

    "I served the famous professors and scholars, and eventually they learned that the Reverend Moon is superior to them.... Even Nobel laureate academics who thought they were at the center of knowledge are as nothing in front of me." (Rev. Moon, Today's World, April 1995

    "The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the world." (Sun Myung Moon, Master Speaks, 5/17/73)

    "Let's say there are 500 sons and daughters like you in each state. Then we could control the government. ... The time will come, without my seeking it, that my words will almost serve as law. If I ask a certain thing, it will be done. If I don't want something, it will not be done." (Sun Myung Moon, Master Speaks 3/24/74)

    "The true sovereign is not the American president nor the English king, but the Lord of the Second Advent." (Rev. Moon, "Returning to the Home Country," Unification News, November, 1993, p.3)

    "Today God's word comes only through Father. If other people receive God's word, that word is that Reverend Moon is the Messiah." (Rev. Ahn, Today's World, January 1995 p.39)

    It looks like the RIO's of the world have confused Obama with Moon. Moon is THE MESSIAH!!! Their media giant, not Obama.

    Buwahahahahaha.

    Posted by crabwalk at 03/26/2009 @ 06:41am

16. Leslie, don't you know that those Goldman Sach folk sitting in the hearings are actually Socialists and Marxists?

    Don't believe me? ask antisocialist. It's all a not-so-secret plot to take over the world for a new Marxism. I saw Geithner at the last Global Warming salon, disguised as a climate scientist. (We all have to wear multiple hats if we are to overthrow the New World Order put in place by Bush 42)

    Posted by crabwalk at 03/26/2009 @ 06:45am

17. Leslie, don't you know that those Goldman Sach folk sitting in the hearings are actually Socialists and Marxists?

    Don't believe me? ask antisocialist. It's all a not-so-secret plot to take over the world for a new Marxism. I saw Geithner at the last Global Warming salon, disguised as a climate scientist. (We all have to wear multiple hats if we are to overthrow the New World Order put in place by Bush 41)

    Posted by crabwalk at 03/26/2009 @ 06:45am

18. This country has few if any journalists and reporters left. All we have now are commentators for the left or the right. Either we have MSNBC (the current mouthpiece for this administration) or Fox (the mouthpiece for the last administration.) The days of true journalism are dead.

    Posted by abell12ct at 03/26/2009 @ 07:22am

19. well...after 8 years of being cowed by one presidency and afraid to make the stupid and powerful look as stupid as they were powerful...

    looks like the main media has some ground to make up.

    plus...after the last couple or three decades of ever increasing spoiled willfully slothful, gluttonous, vainglorious, trivia obsessed, satano-aynrando-ideologized, dumbed down ignorance on the part of all too many of the voting and non-voting jay walking marching morons...

    guess the media has to adjust to the new reality that the average schmuk's attention really HAS been jerked somewhat away from trivial silliness and snake oil salesmen to something more relevant...

    but still a away to go...

    Posted by ibbleblibble at 03/26/2009 @ 07:39am

20. This is just another case in point that proves that you can graduate from college with a Journalism degree and a C- average and still get a job.

    -Wexler

    Posted by WWWexler at 03/26/2009 @ 07:44am

21. Posted by abell12ct at 03/26/2009 @ 07:22am

    Rolling the dice there, aren't ya, abell?

    I mean you're risking that you aren't going to cite Fox News for some support...and that I (or someone else) won't throw back up your previous acknowledgment that that Fox is just a "mouthpiece" for Republicans????

    Posted by Mask at 03/26/2009 @ 07:59am

22. Remember when we had JOURNALISTS before there were talking heads. Posted by bascaville at 03/25/2009 @ 10:25pm

    I remember them as if they were part of a dream. I miss them too. And the country misses them, even if they don't realize it..

    Posted by chaoszen at 03/26/2009 @ 08:56am

23. Posted by comancheamerican at 03/25/2009 @ 10:41pm

    Normally I don't discourage free discussion of ideas, but you are bankrupt. So why don't you just STFU?

    Thanks..

    Posted by chaoszen at 03/26/2009 @ 09:01am

24. COMA-ANTI-AMERICAN,

    Are you gay...for McVeigh?

    Do you daydream about George W Loser, in full USS Lincoln drag costume, drawling those sultry words in your ear..."Bring It On?", just like he cooed at the jihadis.

    Are you convinced that the studly Cheney was sending a coy wink at you, personally, when he kept saying that he had..."other priorities" during the 1960s that apparently elevated making love over making war?

    Anyway, while the semi-literate COMA dimly tries to decode the questions above, here is what that sicko Okie America-Laster refuse really means in his latest spite-driven, hateful attack on The Real America that works, thinks, loves life, and prospers:

    "the continual failures of the [OBAMA] administration and congress THAT CONTRAST SO SHOCKINGLY WITH PEACE AND PROSPERITY OF GEORGE W LOSER'S MAXIMUM LEADERSHIP PRESIDENTING. ESPECIALLY WHEN W LOSER PRESIDENTED IN A WAY SO MANLY DURING CHENEY'S SUPERVISION OF A "TRAINING EXERCISE" THAT LEFT THE EAST COAST OF THE USA UNDEFENDED ON YOU-KNOW-WHAT TUESDAY MORNING IN 2001...

    No one dares to actually question Obamanation and certainly not the Demoncrats on their total mismanagement of not just the economy, but all the failing policies and ignored problems that keep growing and growing EVER SINCE JANUARY 20 AT EXACTLY 12 NOON, BEFORE WHICH TIME AT PRECISELY 11:59, AMERICA AND ITS ECONOMY HAD REACHED ITS UNQUESTIONED & ABSOLUTE ZENITH, AS THE MAXIMUM LEADER PROPHETS RUSH & SEAN HAVE SAGELY DEVINED!!!!..."

    Posted by comancheamerican at 03/25/2009 @ 10:41pm

    Posted by PhilMcCrevice at 03/26/2009 @ 09:51am

25. Just a mild correction to Ms Savan's fine article: That question about the dreadful new Israeli government was placed by Edward Luce of the Financial Times(or the "FT" as the ever-knowledgable Pres. Obama called it.). The FT is the London-based business newspaper that many financial types like myself have switched to, having bailed out on the now Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal. It's a good newspaper, albeit somewhat narrowly-focused on finance, with an excellent editorial page. Highly recommended!

    Posted by petermurphy at 03/26/2009 @ 09:55am

26. Posted by PhilMcCrevice at 03/26/2009 @ 09:51am

    Hey, Phil....seriously. It needs to be about a 6 or an 8

    and you're an 11!

    Posted by Mask at 03/26/2009 @ 09:56am

27. The sorry state of American journalism can, in part, be attributed to the celebrity status of the "stars" of the mainstream media.

    Rather than looking into the, dare I say, criminality of the Pirates of Wall Street with a gimlet eye, the stars of the M$M have themselves been bought off by those whom, if the "system" is working right, they are supposed to have an adversarial relationship. I can well imagine how slanted the reporting would be if the brass at NBC news had put Andrea Mitchell, Mrs. Alan Greenspan, on the Wall Street beat. But I guess that would have been a conflict of interest where even the "news" producers at NBC wouldn't go.

    It's ridiculous to even think that the millionaire pretty boys and girls of the "nightly news" could ever present unbiased reporting on the economy. After all, the the most well-known among the M$M's star reporters are profiting quite handsomely from the statues quo; since when one reaches the celebrity of a national network news-reader/"reporter," one can afford to buy into a hedge fund. Why rock the financial boat?

    It is better for the M$M and their corporate owners to distract the great American lumpenproletarian with tales of aborted fetuses, Octomoms, stem-cell Frankenstein monsters, firearms confiscation, "gay" marriage, the ACLU, Muslims, illegal immigrants...in short anything and everybody except the real people and institutions who are causing them pain.

    Posted by ETSpoon at 03/26/2009 @ 10:08am

28. Posted by Mask at 03/26/2009 @ 09:56am

    MASK,

    You refer to where the knob is set on the volume, SPINAL TAP-style?

    Even if it was turned to, let's just say, 111...COMA and his ghastly ragtag crew of fellow travellers still would not hear it. So, just got to keep turning the knob...

    Posted by PhilMcCrevice at 03/26/2009 @ 10:11am

29. Posted by abell12ct at 03/26/2009 @ 07:22am

    It's not that journalism is dead. It was never more than barely alive. Yes, occasionally you get the meatpacking industry or Richard Nixon exposed. But newspapers started out as polemical pamphlets and never really did get past that. And the internet is no solution. It just means a lot more of the same, just written badly.

    People don't want information. They want validation.

    Posted by MyParadigm at 03/26/2009 @ 10:17am

30. These aren't reporters. These are people who Corporate Media trot out to ask fluff questions. Remember when Helen Thomas was pushed to the back of the room because she had the guts to ask tough questions? During the run up to the Iraq War, these people failed to do their job. And let's not forget the John King interview with Dick Chaney. I was waiting for King to bend down and kiss Chaney's ring. That was an interview? Give me a break! No wonder young people watch Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert. MSM is hopeless.

    Posted by P.D. at 03/26/2009 @ 10:21am

31. Posted by PhilMcCrevice at 03/26/2009 @ 10:11am

    Just saying you can make a better case with a hammer...than with a boulder.

    Posted by Mask at 03/26/2009 @ 10:57am

32. I am darn glad Obama speaks with intelligence and knowledge of the subjects. I want a president smarter than me, not the case with W. I think we have a real bonafide leader.

    clayt

    Posted by clayt at 03/26/2009 @ 11:53am

33. I have a feeling that if Geithner winced at a Maxine Waters question, he did understand and she wasn't so clumsy. I'd be surprised if she were--I think she's awfully savvy. Geithner is only intelligent in a very narrow way and needs to pass his job to an independent economist like Stiglitz.

    Posted by mimsky at 03/26/2009 @ 11:54am

34. Elsewhere in media: another gray lady (perhaps a little old lady) going under--the Ann Arbor News.

    Oh well.

    Posted by schnellerheinz at 03/26/2009 @ 12:04pm

35. Zombie media combines with Corporate Wing of Democratic Party to deliver to you the market economy's last gasp:

    (and Yes, Obama can talk and Bush could not but they are essentially the same in their subservience to Wall Street and Corporate Capitalism.)

    Once the economy gets on a even keel (if it ever does) the malefactors of great wealth will deregulate whatever Obama's /Geithner's regulations achieve. (never trust Geithner, he lies like a rug on things like past taxes and bonuses!)

    Capitalism has finally developed its own economic weapons of mass destruction: cdo's, quants, credit default swaps, mega-million dollar salaries.

    Combine this with the usual greed, fraud and avarice and you have a killer system. Except it will kill itself. Hate to bring up Karl Marx here, but he noted how capitalists will sell the rope with which to hang themselves. So it goes.

    Posted by hkaplan at 03/26/2009 @ 12:36pm

36. One would, of course expect this kind of drivel from the Washington Times. But nowadays even the Washington Post has been taken over by a plethora of neocons and other assorted imbeciles. (albeit very dangerous ones) I guess the mainstream press is as collectively guilty of welfare for the privileged as the banking industry and apparently, our government as well.

    Posted by DejaVu at 03/26/2009 @ 12:40pm

37. Elsewhere in media: another gray lady (perhaps a little old lady) going under--the Ann Arbor News.

    Oh well.

    Posted by schnellerheinz at 03/26/2009 @ 12:04pm

    272 employees

    600 carriers, +- 60% are adults.

    Many of the carriers can do nothing else. There are no factory jobs left for those that are physically or mentally handicapped, or those that are unfit for an office environment.

    The economic and scientific engine of SE Michigan, Ann Arbor/Washtenaw County, will no longer have a daily paper. Watch for graft and waste to increase.

    It is a sad case of fiscal reality, but it does not make it any easier to absorb. My parents asked a question that is on the minds of many of the SNews subscribers, who average about 50 years old, "How are we going to know who died?"

    Where are legally required public notices going to be published?

    Posted by crabwalk at 03/26/2009 @ 12:46pm

38. I had thought of Chuck Todd's question as the dumbest I remembered (and it had surprised me because I thought he gave fairly good and half progressive reports often on the news)...but the one on stem cells may well top it. Larry C.

    Posted by pttp at 03/26/2009 @ 12:49pm

39. With the A2 News closing we have a fine example of MBA's losing their minds.

    Not one newspaper has figured out a way to produce revenue on-line.... but they are closing a 174 year old business that still had roughly 8-9% return...and going on-line.

    Posted by crabwalk at 03/26/2009 @ 12:50pm

40. The same people still own the country (media included). Did you expect change when the president changed? Remember, this is America. The media only presents the news that the owners of the media conglomerates want to have presented. Can't be asking questions that might enlighten the masses to what how our country really works.

    Nice parting note hkaplan. So it goes.

    Posted by annakis at 03/26/2009 @ 12:51pm

41. It really doesn't matter whether or not the "press corp" asks ANY questions , let alone "tough" ones; the "press corps" collectively (1) does not have the IQ of a gnat or flea, ( 2) does not hve the courage necessary to do a proper job, (3) are a big part of the problems involved instead of being part of any soutions in keeping with American values, (4) will soon get on the Obama payroll and don't wish to offend. (5) prefer handouts to actual news gathering, (6) have gotten to the point even the sports writers watch ballgame on TV at a bar rather than go out to the ballfield (7) have never understood the honesty and accuracy required to do a proper job, (8) are lazy and slopppy, (8) have never even heard of Eric Severid nor of Edward R. Morrow. let alone try to emulate them. In any case whatever IS asked is not very likely to be responded to with an actual answer instead of just another phoney-baloney campaign talking point, with at bit of flourish and noise signifying nothing whatever.

    Posted by tucanofulano at 03/26/2009 @ 12:52pm

42. Posted by Mask at 03/26/2009 @ 10:57am

    Every instrument for its purpose!

    I am here for some carnivalesque, political cotten-candy fun. There's no shortage of clowns (SJ_ASSCLOWN in the lead) or seedy sideshow acts (JOMAMMA, ANTI-SOCKS) -- along with knowledgable and skilled verbal trapeze artists (such as the vaunted CRABWALK).

    Posted by PhilMcCrevice at 03/26/2009 @ 12:52pm

43. Posted by apoorspic at 03/25/2009 @ 11:28pm | ignore this person | warn this person

    thank you for the post from the racist corner. now we understand.

    Posted by emile duBois at 03/26/2009 @ 1:00pm

44. BS article. There are no such tent cities. We know of several dozen people who Arnold has moved to the Cal Expo site, but very few children are among them and Breaking News: we have a comprehensive social safety in every state.

    Posted by Ogletree at 03/26/2009 @ 1:31pm

45. I do not think guys like Chuck, or Chip, or Jake, or Ed really care about what we the people think of their performance. They are doing it for themselves and because inside their little world their bosses and co-workers are telling them what a great job they are doing. Out here beyond the Hudson and the Beltway most of us are turned off by the snarkiness, the gottcha, the let's stir up some s..... questions. The Big O needs to continue to seek out other communication venues as he did today with the on-line town hall. I would like to see him do Roseveltian fireside chats. He is very good at long form explanations and that is what people are hungry for, not this sound bite zinger crap. The White House press corps will be furious that he is "trying to go over their heads," but that's just too bad. Time for some other media and the average American to participate too.

    Posted by tarryh at 03/26/2009 @ 1:40pm

46. Posted by PhilMcCrevice at 03/26/2009 @ 12:52pm

    Okay...your choice of course.

    Posted by Mask at 03/26/2009 @ 1:55pm

47. Posted by Ogletree at 03/26, 1:31pm

    ...In contrast with the Dark Ages of the Clinton era when...

    * All of The Clinton States of Hammmer & Sickle AmeriKKKa were transformed into one gigantic tent city. That's the way it was. Until George W MaximumBenovolentLeader had all them tent cities dismantled and the population transferrred to their own private McMansions. McMansions that evil-doers Barney Frank and Jimmy Carter subsequently booby-trapped before the overly bluff and credulous Men-of-the-Peeps Republicans could stop them, thus setting the stage for the relentless demagogary of the ObamaNation PoliceState!!!

    * When September 11s and anthtrax attacks happened everyday of the week while Clinton looked on, sniffed, and satisfied his sexual urges by reading kinky books on goats and invading the terrorist nightmare that is Paragauy in response to mass atrocities against the USA that everyone knows had originated from elsewhere.

    * When gay marriage was not just the legal, but absolutely obligatory under Clinton States of AmerikKKKa law. And all readings lists from kindergarten to university consisted of xxx-rated versions of "Daddy's New Room Mate" and other decadent trash endorsed or written by the Liberal Media Elite and their School "Unionist" slaves.

    * Where G*d was mocked without mercy in the public square at the same time that Clinton States of AmeriKKKA idoltry and worship was made compulsory on pain of being skewered by the sharp poles with which Clinton-era tent city slums were constructed. And we all know about the shameless persecution of martyrs like Falwell, Robertson, and most supreme of all, Reverand Moon! To say nothing of the dungeons to which The Clinton States of AmeriKKKa sent Rush and Sean 4 torture!

    Thank G*d for George W Loser!

    Posted by PhilMcCrevice at 03/26/2009 @ 2:16pm

48. I don't recall reporters playing "gotcha" with W - my recollection of the pressers of the W years were softball questions and Bush's smirky replies. To this citizen, the press corps of the Bush Jr years looked like a bunch of freshman pledges who didn't want to upset the BMOC & ruin their chances to go to the really good off campus parties.

    That they're not asking Obama hard questions doesn't surprise me at all.

    Here's my hard questions for Obama - with tent cities springing up, infrastructure crumbling and medical costs accounting for 75% of personal bankruptcies, not to mention engaging two insurgencies, where does he think he's going to get money to cut off drug supplies coming up from Mexico? And why now, when Mexican citizens have been demonstrating to get the military out of the drug enforcement business? This is the time to say that America's 2nd prohibition failed as thoroughly as the first, and remember that a decade of alcohol prohibition funded the Mafia into the 1980s. Ending drug prohibition is the only logical way to free up money we desperately need to restore our economy into something that can support normal families, not just greedy billionaires.

    Posted by TrishR at 03/26/2009 @ 2:32pm

49. I am darn glad Obama speaks with intelligence and knowledge of the subjects. I want a president smarter than me, not the case with W. I think we have a real bonafide leader. clayt Posted by clayt at 03/26/2009 @ 11:53am | ignore this person | warn this person

    That means I am the smartest guy on the planet.

    Posted by apoorspic at 03/29/2009 @ 10:22pm