Day: April 28, 2010

Buyers' remorse among the newsies

Politico’s Josh Gerstein and Patrick Gavin have “Why reporters are down on Obama,” loaded with info, including this:

The [White House] correspondents association recently met with [Press Secy. Robert] Gibbs to discuss, in the words of Bloomberg’s Ed Chen, “a level of anger, which is wide and deep, among members over White House practices and attitude toward the press.”

A few days later, Gibbs said at one of his briefings, “This is the most transparent administration in the history of our country.”
Peals of laughter broke out in the briefing room.

Among many beefs:

Obama. . .  has severely cut back the informal exchanges with the press pool, marking a new low in presidential access

Compared to what?

During his first year in office, President Bill Clinton did 252 such [informal] Q & A sessions — an average of one every weekday. Bush did 147. Obama did 46, according to Towson University professor Martha Kumar.

Well look, it’s only right.  As Rush Limbaugh regularly notes in passing, referring to his inauguration with an apt made-up word, Obama was “immaculated.”  He’s Cocky-locky, as this blogger got tired of saying back in campaign days.

What he does is give interviews — 161 of them, compared to Bush’s and Clinton’s 50 or so each — as to Team O’s comrade-in-arms, NY Times, on one occasion giving “a blockbuster scoop” to a NYT favorite after tapping him on the shoulder and whispering in his ear to join several key players at an international conference.

White Housers tear into reporters by emails and phone calls if even one word is awry in their view.  But

One of the most irritating practices . . . is when aides ignore inquiries or explicitly refuse to cooperate with an unwelcome story — only to come out with both guns blazing when it takes a skeptical view of their motives or success.

“You will give them ample opportunity on a story. They will then say, ‘We don’t have anything for you on this.’ Then, when you write an analytical graph that could be interpreted as implying a political motive by the White House, or something that makes them look like anything but geniuses, you will get a flurry of off-the-record, angry e-mails after you publish,” one national reporter said.

Etc.
Tags: White+House+press+corps, Obama+as+Cocky-locky

Guidance from on high

Who did you say is misguided?

“President Obama called the Arizona [immigration] law misguided. What’s misguided, Mr. President, is the federal government’s ongoing refusal to enforce the laws that are already on the books. Read the Arizona law. Parts of it are word-for-word the same as the federal statutes which continue to be all but ignored.”

That’s Jack Cafferty of CNN speaking, via Patriot Post.

Tags: ,

Kill 'em and sell the parts

Big organ trade in China, reports Wash Times, and why not, the authorities argue implicitly:

“These groups are useless to the state,” Mr. Gutmann said. “They are toxic, so you can’t release them. But they’re worth a great deal of money in terms of their organs.”

Gutmann is of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which keeps an eye on such things.  He’s analyzing Chi-com thinking, of course.

But the argument!  Useless to the state!  Like Down Syndrome child before birth, or oldster for whom med care is denied in the total state.

More: We forget the role of the Christian Church in humanizing our responses.  The 10th-century Norsemen routinely exposed flawed or female infants, in forests or on mountainsides, or pitched them into the water and made marriage choice a wholly paternal matter.  (See intro to Sigrid Undset’s Gunnar’s Daughter, by Sherrill Harbison. )  Then came King St. Olav (we say Olaf), who imported another way of looking at such matters, namely Christianity.

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