thedrifter
10-18-05, 10:36 AM
Setting the Staged
Written by Bob Parks
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
I was a guest on a television call-in talk show last Friday and while the experience is always fun, this time it was not. I was sitting next to the communications director for the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and while we weren't talking much about education, he was rude, and interrupted everyone including the host several times. You know, a typical liberal Mass hole.
One of the topics brought up on the show illustrated an ignorance that must be addressed, as the pundits and activists are protesting from ignorance. But, so what else is new?
The new recitation from the left is that the Bush administration is awash with corruption and cronyism. Their latest example is this whole thing about President Bush ''staging'' a photo-op during a teleconference with soldiers in Iraq. Let's put this in perspective, shall we?
WASHINGTON - It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution.
'This is an important time,' Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. 'The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you.'
Barber said the president was interested in three topics: the overall security situation in Iraq, security preparations for the weekend vote and efforts to train Iraqi troops.
As she spoke in Washington, a live shot of 10 soldiers from the Army's 42nd Infantry Division and one Iraqi soldier was beamed into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building from Tikrit--the birthplace of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
'I'm going to ask somebody to grab those two water bottles against the wall and move them out of the camera shot for me,' Barber said.
A brief rehearsal ensued.
'OK, so let's just walk through this,' Barber said. 'Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?'
'Captain Smith,' Kennedy said.
'Captain Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?' she asked.
'Captain Kennedy,' the soldier replied.
And so it went.
'If the question comes up about partnering - how often do we train with the Iraqi military, who does he go to?' Barber asked.
'That's going to go to Captain Pratt,' one of the soldiers said.
'And then if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit - the hometown - and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?' she asked.
Before he took questions, Bush thanked the soldiers for serving and reassured them that the United States would not pull out of Iraq until the mission was complete.
- DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press
It amazes me constantly: the liberal tendency to be both hypocritical and ignorant at the same time. I asked my fellow television panelists how many of them served in the military. I was not just the only one who served, but I also served as a Navy journalist and worked for a carrier Public Affairs office.
As Navy journalists, we were under strict guidelines as to what we could and couldn't say to the press, as if we'd ever get a chance to talk to the commander-in-chief. Hollywood and Washington stages press conferences all the time, yet when soldiers are told questions in advance on a televised conference call with the president, the leftists lose their minds.
Over on CNN's ''American Morning,'' co-host Miles O'Brien insisted to Major General Rick Lynch in Iraq that the participating soldiers were "coached." Though Lynch repeatedly denied the soldiers were told what to say, O'Brien stuck to his claim they were "coached," citing how the Pentagon official told them, "here's what he's going to say, here's what you might want to say in response, right?" Lynch maintained that "those soldiers yesterday were giving their opinion.'' To which an oblivious O'Brien replied: "Well, I guess it's too bad, if that's true, that people would have another impression this morning, because of the way they were coached."
- Media Research Center
Of course, liberals would love to see active duty personnel hammer the president over the war. However, I had to educate the panel as to the fact that military personnel while serving to ensure our First Amendment rights, have none of their own. I wrote about this before, but a total breakdown of morale could ensue all every service members could speak their minds about their division officer, department head, commanding officer, branch secretary, secretary of defense, or the president.
The teachers union hack started interrupting me saying the troops should have total freedom of speech. However, the USS Midway was no Steven Bochco location. There was no script in which I would prevail before the end credits. Open my mouth too much and I'd spend valuable liberty time onboard, watching the lights of that port city from half a mile out in the bay.
An anonymous senior member of the military told the Los Angeles Times that, "Officers are upset that military people would be coached as to how to talk to the president. ... It's against everything that people in uniform stand for.'' The AP reported that half the troops involved were officers, and the leader of an advocacy group for Iraq war veterans said, "If he wants the real opinions of the troops, he can't do it in a nationally televised teleconference. ... He needs to be talking to the boots on the ground, and that's not a bunch of captains."
- Gil Kaufman, MTV
Note the ''senior member of the military'' spoke to MTV anonymously. Again, I get annoyed that the media extracts criticisms from soldiers when they know these comments can get them into trouble. HELLO...! When are our troops going to realize that the press could give a flying-you-know-what about a soldier. Even if they did, they'd still probably publicize it every time they took an airman to a ballgame, or invited a jarhead over for barbecue.
The media need stop playing games with the careers of those who give some of our news anchors the freedom to make millions reading off of teleprompters.
There are rules....
UNIFORM CODE OF MILITARY JUSTICE (UCMJ)
ART. 88 - CONTEMPT TOWARD OFFICIALS
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
I also think it the epitome of cowardice of the media to goad a service member to violate UCMJ Article 88, then dare the military to take action against that service member. The media have found solace in extracting negative comments against President Bush, and have done so on numerous occasions. It's telling how few times the media ever solicited negative comments against Bill Clinton.
In fact, it never took the media long to report the forced retirement or reprimand of former officers who had anything negative to say about Clinton.
''In the 1990's several officers were disciplined under Article 88 of the military code for publicly denouncing Clinton, including an Air Force general who went so far as to ridicule the president as a 'gay-loving, pot-smoking, draft-dodging womanizer' in front of 250 people at an awards banquet.''
As if Clinton never staged an event around the military, and some in the press gushed over the ones he did.
Boy, That Clinton White House Knew How to Produce "Staged Events"
At the end of the day in Normandy, Bill Clinton walked down to the beach with three veterans of Omaha Beach--Joe Dawson, Walter Ehlers and Robert Slaughter. The tableau was appealing: the young president enjoying the company of the aging heroes. But suddenly the president's aides began tugging the veterans away, mid-conversation, so that Clinton could walk off at sunset down the beach in his dress shoes and have a preplanned meditative moment, with the bluffs on one side and the sea dotted with warships on the other.
Originally, the White House told photographers they were considering a "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" moment, where Clinton and children would throw flowers into the sea.
But they settled on "a moment of solitude.'' The president knew he was supposed to look reflective for the three cameras and dozen photographers who joined him. But after looking soulfully out at the ocean for a moment, he seemed at a loss for what to do next, according to a photographer on the scene, who was scared that Clinton was about to mouth the words "What do I do now?'' But then, spying the stones at his feet left by his advance staff to show him where his camera mark was, the president crouched down and began to arrange the stones into a cross. He gathered more stones to finish the cross, and then bent his head as though in silent prayer.
The White House aides were ecstatic. "Wasn't it great?" they asked reporters.
– Maureen Dowd, New York Times, June 19, 1994
Wow! Maureen Dowd just loved how Clinton managed to play us all. And let's not forget those Clinton staffers that knocked over crosses at the graveyard near the D-Day landing, just to have a concerned-looking Clinton later re-erect them in front of adoring news cameras. Yet liberals claim that Bush is the one using the troops.
The media itself stages media stunts.
On the ''Today'' show last week, Katie Couric was promoting a segment that would talk about the apparent staged interview with soldiers in Iraq. Ironically, a few moments later the show went to correspondent Michelle Kosinski, reporting on location about flooding in New Jersey. Kosinski was canoeing in what looked to be in deep water. However as the segment began, two men walked in front of her in what looked to be a few inches of water.
Simply said, the media lies.
Whether it be the total misrepresentations of the 1994 elections, the rebuilding of Iraq, Proposition 187, the Miers confirmations, Valerie Plame, or the Superdome of death, the media seems determined to regain its self-importance by telling us how we should be looking at things, and who they think should be in trouble. If they make a mistake, no big deal as most Americans are unqualified to offer an intelligent criticism of the exalted news establishment. Only a certified expert could accurately determine if a document where written with a Smith Corona ribbon or on Windows 98, let alone call into question the integrity of a piece presented by Dan Rather.
I was always taught to write about that which you know. Seeing how very few of the Washington press corps are veterans and are for the most part, cowardly liberals who'd never think about defending this nation with their bodies, they are no one to talk about military matters and/or motives.
In actuality, it's the media who are screwing up the war effort by placing our military on trial at every opportunity. Sure, we may treat prisoners with disrespect and may even humiliate them. But given that opportunity, they'd cut every last one of our infidel heads off with a kitchen knife. Yet Reuters won't call them terrorists, as that would be judgmental.
The president seems to love and appreciate those serving under him. Bush has never written that he loathed them. Clinton did and had Marines carry his suitcases.
The troops may have been briefed before speaking to him, but Bush isn't the one who smiles to their faces and rats them out seeking indictments and court-martials just to be in the running for Pulitzer Prizes.
That's the job of the media, and they do it well.
About the Writer: Bob Parks is a versatile writer, activist, and political campaigner, who currently resides in Boston.
Ellie
T
Written by Bob Parks
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
I was a guest on a television call-in talk show last Friday and while the experience is always fun, this time it was not. I was sitting next to the communications director for the Massachusetts Teachers Association, and while we weren't talking much about education, he was rude, and interrupted everyone including the host several times. You know, a typical liberal Mass hole.
One of the topics brought up on the show illustrated an ignorance that must be addressed, as the pundits and activists are protesting from ignorance. But, so what else is new?
The new recitation from the left is that the Bush administration is awash with corruption and cronyism. Their latest example is this whole thing about President Bush ''staging'' a photo-op during a teleconference with soldiers in Iraq. Let's put this in perspective, shall we?
WASHINGTON - It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution.
'This is an important time,' Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. 'The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you.'
Barber said the president was interested in three topics: the overall security situation in Iraq, security preparations for the weekend vote and efforts to train Iraqi troops.
As she spoke in Washington, a live shot of 10 soldiers from the Army's 42nd Infantry Division and one Iraqi soldier was beamed into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building from Tikrit--the birthplace of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
'I'm going to ask somebody to grab those two water bottles against the wall and move them out of the camera shot for me,' Barber said.
A brief rehearsal ensued.
'OK, so let's just walk through this,' Barber said. 'Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?'
'Captain Smith,' Kennedy said.
'Captain Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?' she asked.
'Captain Kennedy,' the soldier replied.
And so it went.
'If the question comes up about partnering - how often do we train with the Iraqi military, who does he go to?' Barber asked.
'That's going to go to Captain Pratt,' one of the soldiers said.
'And then if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit - the hometown - and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?' she asked.
Before he took questions, Bush thanked the soldiers for serving and reassured them that the United States would not pull out of Iraq until the mission was complete.
- DEB RIECHMANN, Associated Press
It amazes me constantly: the liberal tendency to be both hypocritical and ignorant at the same time. I asked my fellow television panelists how many of them served in the military. I was not just the only one who served, but I also served as a Navy journalist and worked for a carrier Public Affairs office.
As Navy journalists, we were under strict guidelines as to what we could and couldn't say to the press, as if we'd ever get a chance to talk to the commander-in-chief. Hollywood and Washington stages press conferences all the time, yet when soldiers are told questions in advance on a televised conference call with the president, the leftists lose their minds.
Over on CNN's ''American Morning,'' co-host Miles O'Brien insisted to Major General Rick Lynch in Iraq that the participating soldiers were "coached." Though Lynch repeatedly denied the soldiers were told what to say, O'Brien stuck to his claim they were "coached," citing how the Pentagon official told them, "here's what he's going to say, here's what you might want to say in response, right?" Lynch maintained that "those soldiers yesterday were giving their opinion.'' To which an oblivious O'Brien replied: "Well, I guess it's too bad, if that's true, that people would have another impression this morning, because of the way they were coached."
- Media Research Center
Of course, liberals would love to see active duty personnel hammer the president over the war. However, I had to educate the panel as to the fact that military personnel while serving to ensure our First Amendment rights, have none of their own. I wrote about this before, but a total breakdown of morale could ensue all every service members could speak their minds about their division officer, department head, commanding officer, branch secretary, secretary of defense, or the president.
The teachers union hack started interrupting me saying the troops should have total freedom of speech. However, the USS Midway was no Steven Bochco location. There was no script in which I would prevail before the end credits. Open my mouth too much and I'd spend valuable liberty time onboard, watching the lights of that port city from half a mile out in the bay.
An anonymous senior member of the military told the Los Angeles Times that, "Officers are upset that military people would be coached as to how to talk to the president. ... It's against everything that people in uniform stand for.'' The AP reported that half the troops involved were officers, and the leader of an advocacy group for Iraq war veterans said, "If he wants the real opinions of the troops, he can't do it in a nationally televised teleconference. ... He needs to be talking to the boots on the ground, and that's not a bunch of captains."
- Gil Kaufman, MTV
Note the ''senior member of the military'' spoke to MTV anonymously. Again, I get annoyed that the media extracts criticisms from soldiers when they know these comments can get them into trouble. HELLO...! When are our troops going to realize that the press could give a flying-you-know-what about a soldier. Even if they did, they'd still probably publicize it every time they took an airman to a ballgame, or invited a jarhead over for barbecue.
The media need stop playing games with the careers of those who give some of our news anchors the freedom to make millions reading off of teleprompters.
There are rules....
UNIFORM CODE OF MILITARY JUSTICE (UCMJ)
ART. 88 - CONTEMPT TOWARD OFFICIALS
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
I also think it the epitome of cowardice of the media to goad a service member to violate UCMJ Article 88, then dare the military to take action against that service member. The media have found solace in extracting negative comments against President Bush, and have done so on numerous occasions. It's telling how few times the media ever solicited negative comments against Bill Clinton.
In fact, it never took the media long to report the forced retirement or reprimand of former officers who had anything negative to say about Clinton.
''In the 1990's several officers were disciplined under Article 88 of the military code for publicly denouncing Clinton, including an Air Force general who went so far as to ridicule the president as a 'gay-loving, pot-smoking, draft-dodging womanizer' in front of 250 people at an awards banquet.''
As if Clinton never staged an event around the military, and some in the press gushed over the ones he did.
Boy, That Clinton White House Knew How to Produce "Staged Events"
At the end of the day in Normandy, Bill Clinton walked down to the beach with three veterans of Omaha Beach--Joe Dawson, Walter Ehlers and Robert Slaughter. The tableau was appealing: the young president enjoying the company of the aging heroes. But suddenly the president's aides began tugging the veterans away, mid-conversation, so that Clinton could walk off at sunset down the beach in his dress shoes and have a preplanned meditative moment, with the bluffs on one side and the sea dotted with warships on the other.
Originally, the White House told photographers they were considering a "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" moment, where Clinton and children would throw flowers into the sea.
But they settled on "a moment of solitude.'' The president knew he was supposed to look reflective for the three cameras and dozen photographers who joined him. But after looking soulfully out at the ocean for a moment, he seemed at a loss for what to do next, according to a photographer on the scene, who was scared that Clinton was about to mouth the words "What do I do now?'' But then, spying the stones at his feet left by his advance staff to show him where his camera mark was, the president crouched down and began to arrange the stones into a cross. He gathered more stones to finish the cross, and then bent his head as though in silent prayer.
The White House aides were ecstatic. "Wasn't it great?" they asked reporters.
– Maureen Dowd, New York Times, June 19, 1994
Wow! Maureen Dowd just loved how Clinton managed to play us all. And let's not forget those Clinton staffers that knocked over crosses at the graveyard near the D-Day landing, just to have a concerned-looking Clinton later re-erect them in front of adoring news cameras. Yet liberals claim that Bush is the one using the troops.
The media itself stages media stunts.
On the ''Today'' show last week, Katie Couric was promoting a segment that would talk about the apparent staged interview with soldiers in Iraq. Ironically, a few moments later the show went to correspondent Michelle Kosinski, reporting on location about flooding in New Jersey. Kosinski was canoeing in what looked to be in deep water. However as the segment began, two men walked in front of her in what looked to be a few inches of water.
Simply said, the media lies.
Whether it be the total misrepresentations of the 1994 elections, the rebuilding of Iraq, Proposition 187, the Miers confirmations, Valerie Plame, or the Superdome of death, the media seems determined to regain its self-importance by telling us how we should be looking at things, and who they think should be in trouble. If they make a mistake, no big deal as most Americans are unqualified to offer an intelligent criticism of the exalted news establishment. Only a certified expert could accurately determine if a document where written with a Smith Corona ribbon or on Windows 98, let alone call into question the integrity of a piece presented by Dan Rather.
I was always taught to write about that which you know. Seeing how very few of the Washington press corps are veterans and are for the most part, cowardly liberals who'd never think about defending this nation with their bodies, they are no one to talk about military matters and/or motives.
In actuality, it's the media who are screwing up the war effort by placing our military on trial at every opportunity. Sure, we may treat prisoners with disrespect and may even humiliate them. But given that opportunity, they'd cut every last one of our infidel heads off with a kitchen knife. Yet Reuters won't call them terrorists, as that would be judgmental.
The president seems to love and appreciate those serving under him. Bush has never written that he loathed them. Clinton did and had Marines carry his suitcases.
The troops may have been briefed before speaking to him, but Bush isn't the one who smiles to their faces and rats them out seeking indictments and court-martials just to be in the running for Pulitzer Prizes.
That's the job of the media, and they do it well.
About the Writer: Bob Parks is a versatile writer, activist, and political campaigner, who currently resides in Boston.
Ellie
T