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The Change that they were waiting for: Gibbs and the WH Press Pool.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  January 16th, 2010 at 09:18 AM  | 

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Contra Hot Air and Instapundit, this isn’t really funny:

…it’s sad. The White House press pool is being given the mushroom treatment; and they know that they’re being given the mushroom treatment. But they don’t want to respond appropriately – which is to say, stop letting Robert Gibbs define what are or are not appropriate questions to ask. Until that happens – and the press corps internalizes the notion that Gibbs and the administration needs them a hell of a lot more than they need Gibbs and the administration – they’ll keep getting the mushroom treatment.

I’d be sympathetic, except that elections have consequences.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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  • partyof1

    , the first full day of the Obama administration, the President signed a memo calling for openness and transparency in government, and he instructed the government to come up with a plan.

    http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=160&sid=1681385

  • bigalsouth

    Check out the video at 1:01. What is THAT? I have never heard a man giggle like a fifth grade school girl. Perhaps that is just nervous laughter, the kind of laughter when your boss makes you act like a fifth grade school girl in front of the pool reporters. And an uninformed fifth grader.

    Robert Gibbles: I may be smarter than a Fifth Grader, but I sure giggle like one.

  • lukematthews

    This farce they call a briefing is just another log on the fire. But, it is growing increasingly apparent the press doesn’t really understand the depravity of this administration and Congress. Jake Tapper, yesterday afternoon on Hannity on the radio, didn’t understand why the Tea Party convention didn’t include the traditionally Democratic media sources. He was just stunned that somebody wouldn’t beg his network to come and report on their meetings. After the New York 23 and now with the Brown in Massachusetts, these people are shell shocked. It isn’t supposed to work like this. They are supposed to report, we are supposed to listen, and the administration is supposed to react.
    This tape reveals just how much the game has changed, and they don’t know what to do next. Gibbs is trying to hide an elephant with a baby blanket. The press, needing ‘quotes’ to ‘source’ their story must report the baby blanket and not the elephant. It’s absolutely just theater.

  • fisk2521

    One wonders when the entire press corps wakes up to the blatant duplicity of this administration and realizes that it is aimed at all Americans, including them.. How many times can this jackass Gibbs make fools of the WH press corps before they get angry and start yelling back at him?

    Wouldn’t it be great footage to see the entire press corps get up and walk out, or better yet, security being called by Gibbs to arrest or throw them out of the American people’s White House. It is truly analogous to the statement made recently that the Senate seat from Massachusetts was Ted Kennedy’s seat. If representative politicians and the ‘journalists’ who apparently speak for them believe such heresy, then we truly do have a serious problem.

    i’ve seen abuse of power in politics, but never such blatant disregard for the truth and fundamental beliefs. The press and the Democratic Party have taken part in this debacle….. they better clean it up soon.

    “Every violation of truth is not only a sort of suicide in the liar, but is a stab at the health of human society. ”
    Ralph Waldo Emerson

  • NeoKong

    If they push too hard they we lose their access and they know it.
    This is how Gibbs can get away with lying through his teeth and laughing like it is a joke every time someone asks a difficult question.
    Most of the so called reporters in that room are hand picked and approved by the White House anyway.Look at Fox for example. Major Garrett is the only Fox correspondent they will allow in that room because he is not threatening to them.
    Gibbs knows that he can completely stutter his way through an answer that contains no information and then refer to it later by saying he already answered that question.
    Who is going to call him on it….
    ABC ?
    NBC ?
    CBS .?
    The Washington Post or the New York Times…?
    Don’t hold your breath.

  • http://moelane.com/ Moe Lane

    Personally, that is. He’s one of the few journalists who came out of the 2008 election with his honor essentially intact.

  • http://www.suvstrategery.blogspot.com SoFiMil

    Was doing some research over at the Dark Side recently and saw you reaching out across the aisle.

  • http://www.voterubio2010.com nelsa

    The girly giggle just cracked me up! I was going to post exactly what you said. This guy is pathetic. I call him “Beltway Bob”.

    The good news is that most Americans are getting the transparency that they deserve.

    They can see right through BS coming out of the Whitehouse and it is translating in to votes and support for Republicans.

  • izoneguy

  • partyof1

    and is that really all it takes to handle the media?

    “Well, he told me to “hold on”, what could I do?”

  • Jack_Savage

    Once you have all your chips in the pot, you can’t reach in, sort them out, and put them back on your side of the table.

    They committed to a course of action during the campaign and it is way too late to change now. Chris Matthews only said what the others were thinking – it is their job to help this President. When Gibbs pees on their leg and tells them it is raining, they report that it is raining.

    I was thinking of the impact the Lewinsky mess had on the feminist movement. They sold their souls to Bill Clinton and the Dems, and when they were faced with a textbook case of what absolutely cannot happen between a boss and a woman at a workplace, particularly when the boss has a fiduciary relationship with the harassee, they folded. The “feminist movement” has not been a factor since.

    Same thing with the Harry Reid remarks. By defending Reid, the race hustlers just sold out completely to the Democrats and will never, ever get what little credibility they had back. Ever.

    I don’t think the press corp, particularly this early in the Obama administration, gets what a joke they have become. No one listens to them, no one cares what they say, and whatever influence they had is gone forever. They will turn on Obama soon to try and save their reputations, but it will be too late. They should have known earlier. We did.

    Instead of listening to an evening newscast filter of events, my children have learned to go to the source material and make up their own minds – a really, really bad situation for those who would frame the debate for us.

  • bk

    You can tell most of the press guys DETEST Gibbs. Helen Thomas gives him a hard time even when he tries to ignore her.

  • JoeG

    “Instead of listening to an evening newscast filter of events, my children have learned to go to the source material and make up their own minds – a really, really bad situation for those who would frame the debate for us.”

    I’m working on mine too. Some much original source material is available now.

  • http://www.voterubio2010.com nelsa

    what it is like to have coffe coming out of my nose! LOLOLOLOL
    That is a winner!

  • antisocial

    And then resigns to the fact that the night can not be undone. They deserved this treatment. This was the same group cheering for hope and change.

    They can whine now but they are never going to get their credibility back. As Rush says they are State controlled media.

  • Stan(ley) Pruss

    They are now making money & beginning to be able to fund real investigative journalism. Erase your google news bookmark and don’t give the liberals the hits. Don’t go to or link to NYT etc. Starve them.

  • clintonformccain

    It’s sad to so see such long faces on a room of bright eyed, bushy tailed campaign workers like that. They workded so tirelessly to get him elected and now they are feeling a twinge of disappointtment as the admininistration mocks them.

    The amazing thing is that they are just now figuring out that their guy is a pathological liar who refuses to answer questions. Maybe they should have pushed him a little more when he ducked first question about when he stopped using cocaine? Maybe they should have pressed a little harder when he tried to feed them that nonsense about barely knowing Rezko having only met Ayers once or twice walking the dog. Or, letting him off the hook when he told them that every record from every job he’d ever held (even the long ones where he was there for a year) had just “been lost”?

    So, like, to the White House press (fluffer?) corps, I’m really sympathetic. I think I would say to them, “I feeeeel your pain…….”

  • ModernAgeFan

    I have the sense watching this that everyone in the wh press corp has a sick, lost at sea feeling. I think they realize their credibility is shot and they have no one to blame for their predicament but themselves. Their objections to Gibb’s answers sound so half-hearted. Its almost as if they are pleading with Gibbs to help them out, and that sick laugh of his just finishes them off. I wonder if after this conference is over did they slink out of the room and off to the nearest pub to drown out their tortured sorrows? I would laugh at all of this if I was not so disgusted.

  • redneck_hippie

    that The One (termer) is in complete disdain of them.

    If BO was interested in a competent press secretary, Gibbs would have been gone by now. BO wants to keep Gibbs right where he is to show the press the disdain in which they are held by their master.

    As far as the Gibbs personna: Beltway Bob was only the second of two models for this churl. The first was the Whitehouse stonewalling under none other than WJC, whose stonewalling did not save him from being impeached.

  • redneck_hippie

    There should come a point where the outlets need to send only third-stringers to the “briefings.” Clearly the antagonistic questions will NEVER be answered. The content will be covered by new media, just as it is done in this post.

  • Bedell

    that I can stomach reading. I’m surprised he lasts with ABC

  • bigalsouth

    You can have your thunder back, it did not fit. “Heeheeeh haaaheee hahaha heee hee teehee tee heeee.” — Robert “Giggles” Gibbs

  • NeoKong

    I got banned.
    It only took a half hour but it was worth it. They went crazy.
    Ha Ha!
    I sat there like a sleeper cell for months waiting for the opportunity.

  • Read Chesterton in New Improved Jersey

    Their news search results are demonstrably slanted to the left. Bing is my new home saerch page. As an aggregator, Drudge does just fine.