Boy, the White House press corps can get down right pushy when it comes to a lack of CNN on air Force One.
Imagine the cheek. You're invited to a home far above your lowly station and during the course of a tour you suddenly demand that all the TV's be turned to a channel of your liking, like say, oh, that paragon of honest reporting and the blatant purveyor of the Democratic Party line, CNN.
Well it appears that the corps, or should I say corpse, were quite concerned that tax payer dollars were being squandered by a continual reliance on the dreaded fair and balanced news offered on Fox News, known to be a favorite source for that ill-fated trap-shooting David Gregory dissing Dick Cheney.
Oh, that White House press gang, what will they think of next.
But, really, how tough are these guys?
Can't they travel in style on the President's plane for a few hours - with briefcases laden with the New York Times and the New Yorker, with i-Pods in their ears spouting all manner of leftist diatribes, yukking it up with the most liberal of all classes in today's wacky vanguard of the Democratic Nomenklatura, endlessly stroking dog eared photos of Hillary and Bill, already soaked in progressive slogans--without a constant liberal video input to assuage them?
Many of us, from the real work a day world, must tough it out through the occasional soap opera, cooking show and travel odyssey and survive, none the worse for wear.
Sure we sometimes change the channel quickly when our better half exits the room for a minute or two, dragging the Packers or the Yankees back into view to catch the scores, but we are able to soldier on when it's time to return to the previous channel, knowing that this too will pass and that dinner will soon arrive, just as summer follows spring, or Hillary follows money.
But it appears that the White House press corps, toughened after years of militantly insouciant behavior, hardened by the indifference of an emboldened President, aged far beyond their years by the horrific scenes they have been routinely immersed in, cannot endure these same abominable interludes with the same perspicacity the much maligned peasantry is expected to evince.
Following the outrage over the Fox/CNN debacle, another far reaching skirmish was also fought over the amenities available in air Force One.
Realizing the value of their sublime victory, immediate and plaintive cries went up over the softness of the facial tissues offered the bellyaching heralds on their flights of fancy.
Following a pow-wow held within a hastily appointed council of the wise, said to be all too few in number, where a lengthy debate over the merits of Kleenex soaked in skin lotion or without was bandied around for quite some time, final demands were made for both, to be clearly marked, and to be offered at enough locations to enable the dog-tired rapporteurs to obtain them without a lengthy sojourn in the tricked out 747's spacious fuselage.
Mr McClellan, in his final days, and knowing that Mr Snow would show little similar mercy for these inane late game entreaties, relented and allowed the placement of a series of colored boxes, marked accordingly to denote their contents, and ordered their placement throughout the public areas of the famous aircraft.
and so, the members of the White House press corps, who have been forced to suffer so long in the doubly uncaring atmosphere of the world's most luxurious aircraft, can now watch CNN spin their yarns and manufacture their stories from whole cloth while lazing on individual piles of comfortable bolsters, and wipe their faces and evacuate their aquiline noses with the world's very best offering in facial tissues.
Meanwhile, it was announced that the aeroflot aircraft carrying President Putin would only offer vodka to the accompanying journalists in nip sized bottles.
It appears that the correspondents accompanying Mr Putin, making do without the handi-wipes and the full-sized bathrooms available to Mr Bush and his feckless scribbling ride-alongs, were routinely splashing vodka from the liter bottles provided by the airline onto their own facial tissues to wipe their sweaty faces on long flights, which are often plagued by air conditioning problems.
an aeroflot spokesman explained that it was a waste of fine Russian distilled spirits for the scriveners to use it to swab their slimy mugs.
The White House press corps could be flying with someone else and Bogarting the vodka over there rather than the channels over here.
But they'd receive far less sympathy for their efforts.
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