Let's start off by saying that it's not easy - for those celebrated members of the fourth estate who waive the valued White House press credentials about for entry into the holy of holies and to impress the barstool queens, waitresses and lushes at their favorite watering holes - peppering the poor lad representing a Republican administration with spite, questions laden with vitriol and dripping with pique and looking cool, calm and collected while they do it.
Nope, journalism, as practiced today in the klieg-lit, white-hot, devil-may-care, come-what-may enclave of a White House press briefing, is all about nailing the poor slob up front with as pointed, slanted, mean and rehearsed a tirade of a question as possible, as quickly and shrilly as one can, with as large a camera-ready sneer as possible, that is, without hindering the clear transmission of the liberal message. To lend an air of camouflaged civility to the proceedings, the selected interrogator will toss off the first name of the victim before the grilling begins so the folks at home don't really think this is a modern send up to the giddy free-for-alls once found in the basements of the old Lubyanka or #8 Prinz albrechtstrasse.
Somewhere in the advanced journalism electives at the major colleges and universities peddling this highly nuanced major there must be an elective, where the arts and science of verbal inquisition are offered. There are classroom settings where modern liberal scriveners continually pound a sweaty victim, who must stand under the bright lights, reacting to questions of an acute and unsavory nature for a protracted period. Grades are given for the severity of the questioning, the intensity of the drama, the pointed gesticulations, the length and breadth of the accompanying diatribe and the level of visible damage done to the victim. While everyone must take a go at questioning in order to pass, only those identified with conservative values, three button suits, tasseled loafers, and the reading of the Washington Times will be ordered to stand up and endure the cross-examination.
as Solzhenitsyn found out in his research on the Gulag archipelago, the guards had it tough, too. It was freezing cold and they were far from home. It was no fun wrestling a bunch of starving, dying and non-compliant zheks back and forth from a distant work site, where the orders of the day specified the digging of holes in the frozen taiga, and the guards, bundled up in shearling coats, sable hats, and seal skin boots, had to stand outside with their freezing charges. and now we find that the White House press corps, that vaunted, no-nonsense band of hardhearted hacks, whose sole purpose has been the continual hectoring and humiliating of the small man up front blinking in the lights, have their problems in life, too.
The first cracks in the granite edifice appeared when David Gregory had his breakdown. Or at least what was described as a loss of temper and control at Scott McClellan, the current target of the corps of vilifiers.
Poor Scott had the temerity to ask a question about the need for the super heated grilling, the over zealous behavior, and what seemed to him to push the formerly acceptable boundaries exhibited by that rapacious mob of ink slingers, during their raucous over-reaction to the Whittington hunting and Cheney quail stamp difficulties, over the edge. He received a bitter denunciation from poor David, who called him, "a jerk," and urged him to, "just answer the question." It suddenly appeared as if the guards were having trouble with the benighted prisoner.
Later, David, realizing his misfortune, its precedence and the magnitude of his emotional display - without the use of a pitch cap, thumb screws, the lash, hot bamboo spikes, hot irons, the iron maiden, the cage, the dropping of rats onto his bare face, boiling oil, submersion in a tank of foul smelling water, the dunking stool, extended solitary confinement, the iron mask, trial by fire, gouging out of his eyes, the application of ice, scourging, dragging by horses through a cactus patch, being whipped by nettles, flaying or near drowning — recanted. But the first cracks were visible in the smooth granite edifice. The highly strung and vigilant White House Press corps had suffered its first casualty in their ongoing war against truth and reason, their battle against President Bush and their open advocacy of the liberal mien.
Mr Gregory appeared absolutely delirious that Mr McClellan, who had so faithfully endured a seemingly endless rain of rhubarb pies, rotten vegetables and spoiled fruit directed at him by the finest journalistic minds alive in this planetary system, and who had survived for so long without the use of a bib, goggles or a rubber suit for protection from their deleterious effects, had the temerity to speak up after deflecting more foul tips than Joe Garagiola.
and now we learn that Mr Gregory is not stewing in his own juice alone and that a respected Washington area clinical psychologist has reportedly counseled a number of the White House news hounds as a direct result of the trauma they have experienced - while barraging Mr McClellan with imputations of secrecy during war, the failure of Dick Cheney to recognize their importance for the survival of the nation as we know it and the other outlandish behavior they have been forced to witness — that they feel restricted and controlled by sinister forces, and that their enormously high intellects have been bruised by this thoughtless behavior. The edifice is cracking and the flying buttresses supporting the middle cannot hold much longer.
But further evidence came sloshing in as Thursday's Imus "show" apparently featured a frothy debate over Indian phrases, inebriation, Imus and the seemingly haunted David Gregory calling in while on the road. Wild allegations of intemperance were made on the air concerning Mr Gregory's irrational and incongruous mewling from a pay phone in either Calicut, Hyderabad or Cookandeatacat — the connection was somewhat poor. Whether Mr Gregory's reputation can withstand any further opprobrium is outside our purview, but this behavior, following the problems coming to light concerning his earlier outbursts, and with the other difficulties plaguing his fellow members, seems to indicate a further weakening of the edifice, the supporting structure, if not the foundation.
In the space of a few short weeks, the highly touted White House press corps has been reduced to a shambles, their finely hewn granite edifice wrecked, their progressive membership in tatters — with the news of their members needing psychological help the grist of every conservative mill in town, on talk radio, on the web, and pasted up on every blogger's site - and now their spokesman is involved in another damaging and eyebrow raising flap, involving what purports to be inebriation on a nationally syndicated television show, or what appears to be at least a side-show.
The mighty are falling, the press corps is calling retreat and the White House is no longer viewed as being circled by a pack of hungry wolves but as being more or less surrounded by a band of troubled hecklers.
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