Art Pottery, Politics and Food
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
 

Why do I hear the echo of "I'm not a crook!" in the above statement?
I actually felt sympathetic shame for the White House Press Corps, this morning. Throughout the Rose Garden event, the President read from a scripted list of reporter names. On several occasions it was clear that the President was also consulting a "crib sheet". During this aborted exchange with a CBS White House correspondent intent upon refocusing a rambling President on the hyped Iraq WMD imminence, Mr. Bush's eyes feverishly scanned the cheat sheet and seemed to directly sight read several spoken phrases:

Let me finish for a minute, please. Just getting warmed up.

(LAUGHTER)

I'm, kind of, finding my feet.
(SIGHT READING, in my opinion) Saddam Hussein was a threat. The United Nations viewed him as a threat. That's why they passed 12 resolutions. Predecessors of mine viewed him as a threat.
We gathered a lot of intelligence. That intelligence was good, sound intelligence on which I made a decision.

In transcript form it all seems so chummy, however, the scripted questions, "jokes" and on cue laughter serve only to give the President space to cruise the cheat sheet.
An embarrassing performance for Bush and the press that cries for the flavor enhancement of fresh raw spin.

Photo: Charles Dharapak, AP



- posted by Sean @ 6:22 PM
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