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(An Eisenhower Press Conference - cheerfully referred to as Old Bubblehead)

I'm trying to do the math here. The tape says this is Press Conference Number 68. It's from May 11, 1955 - Eisenhower has been in office since January 1953. So as best as I can round it out, that's about one Press Conference every two weeks. I've spoken with several people who were with the White House Press Corps at the time and they honestly did refer to Eisenhower as "Old Bubblehead" - I'm not making it up.

I wonder if he was guilty of being overexposed?

At any rate - two subjects were covered:

First was The Big 4 Summit back when only four countries were considered worth getting together. Times have changed.

Pres. Eisenhower: “I would think the most important thing to possibly be done at such a meeting would be to define the lines or directions in which we commonly would want our Foreign Ministers to work to see if there’s any opportunity to relieve the tensions in the world. And beyond that, I don’t think you can possibly say what the subjects would be. Certainly there would be no agenda except in the most generalized form, to talk about a general group of subjects . No agenda in the sense that Foreign Ministers would normally meet.”

A sort of summit to sit around and talk about what they're going to sit around and talk about.

The other important topic in this press conference was the newly introduced Polio Vaccine which had been temporarily held up by reports of Polio outbreaks among people who got the vaccine.

1955 was the year the Salk Polio Vaccine was made public. People don't talk about Polio that much anymore, as it has been all but eradicated. But in the 1950s it was scary, especially if you were a kid.

The one thing that struck me was the civility of the press - not much in the way of screaming. Fancy that.

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While the rest of the Morning Joe crew was espousing their new found love for Helen Thomas and former MSNBC reporter Chip Reid, Carl Bernstein managed to get Chuck Todd's back hair up by reminding him that the White House press corps yelling at the Press Secretary is not exactly what anyone should consider real journalism.

While I whole heartedly agree with Todd that it is important to hold these people accountable, Bernstein's points about this entire ordeal looking petty, and about where real journalism happens, which is reporters getting out there and knocking on doors, and digging into whether someone's actually telling you the truth or not, fact checking what you're told, etc. is what should be considered actual journalism is valid as well, and he managed to make Todd look petty while making it.

Todd tried to defend what the White House press corps does on a daily basis, and not very well IMO. When you're making excuses for asking Michael Jackson questions you've already lost the argument Bernstein was trying to make.

I want to know where these birds were with their love of Helen Thomas when the Bush White House refused to call on her for the better part of eight years? I'd also like to know if they're going to continue to support her if she asks some tough questions on things like these bank bailouts, spying on everyone which hasn't stopped, or these mindless wars that we're still sending our troops off to fight and die in. Is that going to make the "news" cycle on Morning Joe? Somehow, I doubt it.

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Fox News is airing a new commercial on their station that frankly had me almost throwing up in my mouth a little when I saw it. Fox has decided to roll out their full list of regular pundits to espouse the network's journalistic integrity and "core principles". No...I'm not joking.

Here are some of the "principles" they claim Fox News promotes: civility, mutual respect, strengthening our diverse society by striving for unity, tolerance, open debate and civil discourse.

Yeah, that's exactly what I think of when I see the likes of Sean Hannity or Bill O'Reilly screaming over one of their guests. Or Glenn Beck riding that crazy train off into the horizon. Or Laura Ingraham on one of her hate filled screeds that's akin to listening to finger nails on a chalk board.

And for a real hoot, check out the ticker that's running below the ad. Breaking News!!... Fox News realizes that Helen Thomas exists and actually cares about what she has to say now that it's criticism of the Obama administration.

I love Helen to death, but her whining about Nico Pitney getting a question from the White House sounds like sour grapes to me from a typical Villager. There's plenty to complain about besides a blogger getting to ask one lousy question that's wrong with that White House press corps if she wants to go on a rant about what's wrong with our media.

I think this Fox Nation ad could use a better description than the one I came up with for the video and the post. I'd love to hear suggestions from the readers here who by and large are always more creative than I am when it comes to these things. We've done some "write your own caption posts". I'll gladly have this be a "write your own video description" instead. Submissions welcomed if you'd care to give all of us a laugh.

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During MSNBC's 9AM/12PM news edition, David Shuster was talking to Andy Barr from the Politico about Sarah Palin's rapidly dropping Alaskan poll numbers. She was on the East Coast, touring with the Republican listening tour that's supposed to save the GOP.

Anyway, she was supposed to go to DC to be a guest at the White House Correspondents Dinner, but then cancelled.

Flooding in her home state has forced Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to cancel an appearance at the White House Correspondents Dinner

Palin told reporters Thursday that she would skip her planned East Coast trip so she could visit parts of Alaska that have been struggling with the most serious flooding in decades.

In addition to attending the dinner Saturday — a mix of Washington elite, White House press corps and Hollywood celebrities — the former Republican vice presidential candidate was scheduled to promote Alaska seafood at an appearance in New York.

What the AP failed to tell us was that Sarah Palin was invited to the dinner by FOX News. No seriously, FOX News invited her as a guest. They are trying to help her run for President in 2012.

Shuster: Why would she want to go to the White House's Correspondence Dinner to begin with, I think I know the answer, but I'll let you explain.

Barr: Well, she was an invited guest of FOX News. As you know the WH Correspondents Dinner is kind of THE event for all the A-Lister's in Washington and if she's going to be a national player , you know a lot of the other players are going to be there, so if there was nothing major going on home, this was something that definitely she could have come to and gotten a lot of attention for.
Shuster: You know Andy, you said something that caught me by surprise. I didn't realize, she was an invited guest of FOX News?

Barr: Yes, she was invited, that's correct. She was going to stay there. I believe Todd Palin is sitting in for her.

Shuster: Alright, I'm just going to keep my mouth shut on that one...

OK, it must have been Greta, right? And they still want to be called a news organization....

How dumb are the right wing bloggers and pundits? I don't have enough time to tell you, but this latest crazed outburst of supposed "media bias" over the treatment of George W. Bush is proof enough that they are suffering a deep and dark depression.

Patrick Gavin posts a very short video clip, all of twenty two seconds that's supposedly a complete media critique of the way the White House press reporters loathe George Bush and just fawn over Barack Obama. Hot Air's Allahpundit writes:

This one’s making the rounds but I’m not sure why. Isn’t this standard chivalrous behavior when you’re in love? If The One were forced to trod upon a muddy path, wouldn’t you expect Chuck Todd or Helen Thomas to lay their coats over it for him? Actually, there’s a more mundane explanation. Sort of.

--

Doesn’t that … basically prove the point of the video? Okay, fine, they’re not anti-Bush. They’re just really, really pro-Obama. Whew!

I know, I should have some pity on their poor souls, but how can I pity idiocy?

Not that I need to link to something that explains away this lunacy, but I will anyway.

John Dickerson:

A video, put together by Politico's Patrick Gavin, is making the rounds showing two presidential visits to the White House briefing room. In one, George Bush arrives for a press conference in February 2008, and the press remains seated. In the second, from last Friday, Barack Obama surprises the press by appearing in the midst of the daily briefing. They stand to greet him. (Given that the press is supposedly in the tank for Obama, shouldn't critics be happy they didn't kneel?)

This may seem silly, but it's symbolic: The discrepancy in treatment is all the proof a Republican needs to show that the press shows special deference to the new Democratic president. It's a distorted picture, though. We stood all the time for President Bush. Reporters customarily do so to show respect for the office of the presidency. In the East Room of the White House, we stood not only when the president came in but to ask questions. Some reporters said thank you to the president even before asking their questions. This practice continues under President Obama....read on

I would tell Allahpundit to just hold his breath until he turns blue whenever he sees media bias when there isn't any, but he might forget to breathe altogether.

Tbogg finds some more.

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A pretty good barometer of Republicans' utter desperation these days is just how farflung from reality their attempts to characterize President Obama are getting to be.

Newt Gingrich, who's clearly preparing for a 2012 White House run, was interviewed yesterday on Fox by Greta Van Susteren. Gingrich has been trying desperately to smear Obama as a weak leader, while cozying up to the GOP's tea-bagging populist wing.

So he hit on a way to hit both sweet spots in one swell foop: Smear Obama as an incipient authoritarian.

The subject was Obama's press conference earlier this week. First in the order, of course, he had to blame Obama's popularity on the media: "I think the Washington White House press corps has taken such a pathetic dive with this president that they ought to just be part of his PR firm!"

But then he there was this exchange:

Van Susteren: Well, you know, Fox News Channel got, quote, punished -- Fox News Channel didn't get a question the other night -- Major Garrett, our White House correspondent -- because the Fox broadcast, not the Fox News Channel, but the Fox broadcast decided not to air the press conference.

Gingrich: Right. Which should tell all of you about the abuse of power inherent in this administration. They now control General Motors, they basically control Chrysler, they control Citibank, they control AIG, and they are prepared to punish people.

I think that's very dangerous, to have a president who thinks he should get up in the morning and punish Americans. You know, appease foreigners, bow to the Saudi king, embrace the Venezuelan dictator, and punish Americans? I think that's a very dangerous attitude.

Gingrich is clearly counting on the public to be like Fox News anchors: They have a convenient case amnesia about the previous eight years of wiretapping, screw-the-public Republican rule.

But notice the underlying meme here: Obama is an incipient dictator who will punish his enemies and rule with an iron fist. Which, of course, is exactly what we're hearing from the growing militia contingent.

And then conservatives get all bent out of shape when someone like the DHS accidentally points out the growing similarities between them and right-wing extremists. Huh. Gee, wonder how that could happen.

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Ari Fleischer on D.L. Hughley Breaks the News talking about the White House press corps and how "tough" David Gregory was on him but a straight shooter when it came to his reporting.

Fleischer: David Gregory D.L., he started out in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I knew him a long, long time ago and he worked his way up and became a White House reporter and then became the host. But what you have to understand is that room is a TV show. It's not the reality. This is where they posture. They show I'm tougher. They know their editors are watching and they know their colleagues are watching. So they're going to show I'm the toughest guy. I can take down the Press Secretary.

Hughley: Who irritated the hell out of you? Somebody had to.

Fleischer: David Gregory. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. But, having said that, that's because that was a TV show in that room. David was the toughest interrogator I had but when it came time to go on the air the man was always fair. What he put on the air was straight down the middle. So that's the bigger story about life at the White House. They can be one thing in that room. The reality is when they come into your office ten times a day and are talking to you privately. They're gathering facts and background information, that's the real work that goes on and most of them are actually pretty polite at that point in their lives, but they're not so polite in that briefing room.

Greg Mitchell has a slightly different take on that in his article at the HuffPo:
Ari Fleischer Defends Press Coverage of Iraq -- Wrong Again!.

That was written back in June of 2008. I see some things never change. Fleischer is still using the same tired talking points and claiming Gregory did his job as a reporter. I think if that were true, he might have spent a little bit of time covering this-- Pictures of Anti-War Protests from Around the World-- and a little less time doing this.

As noted by Think Progress Fleischer was also still claiming that Saddam Hussein was at fault for our invading Iraq: Fleischer: On Iraq, ‘Saddam was the big liar.’.

Fleischer: We were wrong about weapons of mass destruction being in Iraq. […]

Hughley: When you found out that you were wrong, how did that make you feel?

Fleischer: You just scratch your head and say, “How could we be wrong?” It wasn’t just us that thought he had weapons of mass destruction. The Egyptians thought it, the French thought it, the Germans thought it the United Nations thought it, Bill Clinton’s CIA though it. We all thought it. Saddam was the big liar here.

Nothing like a little revisionist history on those weapons in Iraq Mr. Fleischer. And could D.L. Hughley have given this man any more of a softball interview? Hell he was harder on Bay Buchanan than he was Fleischer.

January 18, 2009 CBC The National