DIANA WEST: WE HAVE ANOTHER PROBAMEDIA SWEEPSTAKES WINNER-DANA MILBANK
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2154/We-Have-Another-PrObamedia-Sweepstakes-Winner-Dana-Milbank.aspx
The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank has earned the PrObamedia Laurels this week (or, at least, this morning — competition is fast and furious) for blaming decreasing poll numbers measuring American confidence in the presidency not on Barack Obama’s presidency but on … “conservative leaders” and … Tucker Carlson!
Under the Obama presidency, however, conservative leaders are encouraging the vulgarity if not joining in, by heckling the president from the House floor.
To decipher: “Conservative leaders” = one Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), who in January 2010 famously shouted “You lie!” during SOTU when Prez O did indeed lie to the effect that health care for illegal aliens would not be funded under Obamacare. (It is.) Extra credit question for Dana Milbank: What debases the presidency more — lying to the American people in the carefully scripted SOTU, or spontanesouly calling the president out? Joe Wilson offered his apologies to the president for the interuption. We, the people, are still waiting for ours.
Back to Milbank’s winning entry:
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, recently shared a stage with Donald Trump only hours after the buffoon tycoon had again floated the disproved allegation Obama wasn’t born in the United States.
Sorry, Dana — given the discernibly cobbled-together Internet image Barack Obama is passing off as a birth certificate on the White House website — what times we live in! — no one can prove or disprove where Barack Obama was born. The salient point here is the unexamined, un-“vetted” pattern of apparently criminal deception that the 44th POTUS has engaged in, which Milbank, like almost all of his media brethren on the Left and Right, competely ignores.
Romney failed to challenge a supporter who suggested to him Obama “should be tried for treason.”
See above.
Conservative leaders may believe it benefits them that one in six voters still thinks Obama is Muslim. But when conservatives sanction debasement of Obama, they debase the presidency itself. A Gallup poll last year found only 35 percent of Americans had confidence in the presidency. A Harris poll last month found only 22 percent of Americans have a high degree of confidence in the White House. That’s why my confidence in Tucker Carlson has dropped.
A dash of humor? Dunno about that. He continues:
I’ve liked him for years, even forgiving him his brief moment on “Dancing With the Stars.” I have been impressed by his launch of the Daily Caller, a website with first-rate talent. But now Carlson is turning the Daily Caller into the Daily Heckler. …
Why? (links from the original):
As is now widely known, one of Carlson’s reporters, Neil Munro, interrupted Obama midway through a Rose Garden statement on immigration Friday, demanding to know why the president was favoring “foreigners over American workers” and informing him that “you have to take questions.” Later, when Obama tried to address Munro’s topic [really??], the journalist continued to interrupt and hector.
A reporter heckling a president in the Rose Garden was an outrageous and unprecedented affront to the office. Munro later offered a reasonable, if not terribly believable, explanation, saying that he “timed the question believing the president was closing his remarks, because naturally I have no intention of interrupting the president.”
But Carlson went further, saying that he would like to give Munro a raise for not being a “stenographer” like other White House reporters. He said Munro was doing what ABC’s Sam Donaldson did when he shouted questions at Ronald Reagan. (Donaldson justifiably disagrees.) Carlson’s Web site posted a clip purporting to show “Reagan heckled by entire WH press corps.” But the video in fact shows reporters breaking in to ask questions when Reagan tried to hand off the lectern to his attorney general.
Carlson told me Tuesday that he was “making a larger point about the passive nature of press coverage from the White House” and its tendency to be too respectful of authority “across all presidencies.” I agree on this. I’ve criticized Obama and his predecessor for taking too few questions, and I’ve at times scolded the press corps under both presidents for being soft in its questioning.
I also don’t join the charge that Munro is necessarily racist (although some Obama disparagement surely is), and I don’t agree with those who say the White House should revoke his press pass. But I think Carlson should fire him.
Congrats on the PrObamedia Laurels, Dana! You wear them well.
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