I missed last night’s televised press conference. What did you think? I’m reading a critique at the Anonymous Liberal, and it sounds as if the questions sucked.
The “anger moment” seems to be getting a lot of notice. Ewen MacAskill writes for The Guardian:
The CNN White House correspondent, Ed Henry, who asked the question, also suggested that the New York attorney-general, Andrew Cuomo, was doing a better job of dealing with AIG than the White House.
Obama gave a general answer and Henry again asked why he had taken a few days to tell the public. The normally cool and controlled president replied sharply: “It took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.”
The exchange was unusual, both because it is rare to hear US journalists ask Obama hard questions and rare to see Obama in a testy mood. Much of the rest of the press conference was so carefully choreographed, with a long opening statement, it seemed at times like an extended political broadcast
See also Mike Madden at Salon.
The questions were truly pathetic. I kept wondering if the reporters asking them actually pay any attention to the news. I don’t think anyone asked about the new Geithner plan (kind of important) and certainly not anything like “Two Nobel Prize winning economists, Paul Krugman and Joseph Stieglitz, have strongly criticized the plan. Can you explain to the American people why they are wrong?”
Instead, Chuck Todd asked something astonishingly clueless about what sacrifice Obama was going to ask of the American people. Like losing their retirement plans, jobs, healthcare, businesses, etc. isn’t enough? I couldn’t help but wonder if Chuck Todd was recycling questions he’d written during the Bush administration, but been too afraid to ask then.
By the time Obama ‘brushed back’ Henry, he had already calmly and patiently answered a long string of ignorant, yet unreasonably combative, questions.
Why can’t some of the more widely read bloggers participate in these press conferences?
I knew when Obama was elected that the American public was in for a load of crap from all sides. The Republican hate machines went into overdrive trying to smear him in any possible way. Now their standard meme is that he’s a boring, incompetent speaker. Imagine the gall that takes, after the likes of Bush.
So the press conference turns into a sideshow for some of these “journalists” who want to pin him with a GOTCHA question. Chuck Todd looked like a buffoon and Ed Henry looked like the schoolyard bully in their attempts to show up the President.
I think Obama came off looking like the smartest man in the room. I just hope he continues to deflect the laser beams of stupidity that the press feels compelled to fire at him.
Because the corporate presstitute Haircut TV Journamalists are 99% focused on their ME ME ME I’M ASKING THE PRESIDENT A QUESTION I’M SO IMPORTANT camera time in front of the whole world, and 1% on coming up with an actual intelligent question.
Or if you want to be charitable, perhaps the last eight years of smirky smart-ass responses from an arrogant, denigrating asshole has dulled their expectations for asking cogent questions and expecting an articulate answer.