Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

… cue the First Lady. When men are weak they USE their wives.

It was a trip to the political Twilight Zone with First Lady
Laura Bush. She's a feminist, she declared on “This Week.” She's busy
rebuilding New Orleans (obviously because her husband doesn't know how). Her husband is making hard decisions. It's difficult. It's challenging. Repeating
that the president has to make the tough decisions, again and again. Her message: the president
has an agenda. She's campaigning around the country for Republicans because
George needs a Republican Congress to get it finished. Never mind that her husband actually needs a Republican Congress so he doesn't end up finished; answering questions about his disastrous decisions and the methods used to get us in this unmitigated mess. Oh, and about Bush's illegal spying program, Mrs. Bush said that
her husband is “fiercely” protecting our privacy. “These
are links to al Qaeda that they follow,” she continued, which is all
done “within the law.” I couldn't help but hear the old do-do-do-do
Rod Serling theme song throughout her yarn telling performances, which were
a propaganda tour de force.

Former First Lady Hillary Clinton got pilloried for “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
So why doesn't First Lady Laura Bush get the same treatment, especially when
she veers into the unbelievable? Beware of modest little librarians who come
out and tell us tales, choosing to leave reality back in the library
rooms. If Mrs. Bush is for “education,” then she surely decided to
slip the constraints of teaching on this Mother's Day. I don't expect her to
pillory her husband, but do expect a little rational dialogue that deals with
facts. Today's interviews were fact free fluff fests, filled with presidential
propaganda that diminished Mrs. Bush's stature. It was, quite frankly, beneath
her, but I guess flacking is now job one since her husband has become a political
pariah in his own party.

There may not be much mileage in calling First Lady Laura Bush on her performances
today, but considering the blatant misinformation, which is the kind way to
put it, somebody has to do it. How Mrs. Bush can go on the Sunday shows and
deliver such unmitigated rubbish is beyond me.

Chris Wallace: According to the polls, your husband now has the third lowest approval rating of any president over the last 50 years; better only than Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, and he's even losing some support among conservatives. As someone whose approval ratings are double your husband's, why do you think the American people are beginning to lose confidence in your husband? First Lady Laura Bush: Well, I don't think they are and I don't really believe those polls. I travel around the country. I see people. I see their response to my husband. I see their response to me. Fox “News” Sunday (rough transcript)

It's lovely that Mrs. Bush is traveling with her husband, but
I'd like to remind her that most of George W. Bush's audiences are hand picked.
But it's when she delivers her assessment of the polls that I had to laugh out
loud. President Bush's poll numbers are all about “fun in the press”?
Mrs. Bush complaining that the president's numbers weren't blasted across the
front page when they were high was a main talking point in the interviews. Perhaps
she's forgotten that her husband has enjoyed a press pass for years, as they
were afraid to confront him.

Maybe First Lady Laura Bush needs to be reminded of what the press
didn't do before the run up to the Iraq war. Eric Boehlert lays it out in his
terrific, must read, have to have book, Lapdogs:
How the press rolled over for Bush.

Thirteen days before he announced United States-led coalition forces had begun the war to “disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger,” President Bush on the evening of March 6, 2003, strolled into the East Room of the White House at 8:02 p.m. for a rare press conference — just his eighth since taking office. With war looming, the evening was clouded in a strange dynamic. Perhaps trying to shake off allegations of being a cowboy charging towards war, Bush appeared oddly sedate throughout the prime-time appearance, talking slowly and in a pronounced hush. His low-key approach was mirrored by the ninety-four equally somnambulant reporters assembled that night in the East Room who meekly walked through the motions with Bush. (snip) That was not the night's only oddly scripted moment. Before the cameras went live, White House handlers, in a highly unusual move, marched veteran reporters to their seats in the East Room, two-by-two, like school children being led onto the stage for the annual holiday pageant. The White House was taking no chances with the choreography. Looking back on the night, New York Times White House correspondent Elisabeth Bumiller defended the press corps' timid behavior: “I think we were very deferential because … it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you' re standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war,” she told students at Towson University in Maryland. “There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.” It's unlikely viewers expected “an argument” that night in the East Room. But what about simply asking pointed questions and firmly requesting a direct response? On March 6, even that was beyond the media's grasp. The entire press conference performance was a farce — the staging, the seating, the questions, the order, and the answers. Nothing about it was real or truly informative. It was, nonetheless, unintentionally revealing. Not revealing about the war, Bush's rationale, or about the bloody, sustained conflict that was about to be unleashed inside Iraq. Reporters helped shed virtually no light on those key issues. Instead, the calculated kabuki press conference, stage-managed by the White House employing the nation's most elite reporters as high-profile extras, did reveal what viewers needed to know about the mind-set of the MSM on the eve of war. Lapdogs: how the press rolled over for Bush Cowardly and clueless, the U.S. media abandoned its post as Bush led the country into a disastrous war. A look inside one of the great journalistic collapses of our time.

David Gregory, whom I know makes some people angry, but whom I respect because
at least he tries to press the prez and his people, mentioned the reality yesterday
on Tim Russert's CNBC show. Gregory said that the president and his staff have
purposely frozen out the press. He went on to say that this technique caused
the press to become more pliant out of necessity. If they hadn't been more polite
they wouldn't have gotten access, which is their job to get, Gregory continued.
But what have we sacrificed in return for the free press sycophants accepting
this diminished role? That I actually give Gregory points for even trying shows the pathetic state of the free press affair with Bush.

Mrs. Bush's appearances today were straight out of the “Leave
it to Beaver” era. It's the same attitude and type of talking points that
had millions and millions of women running to big pharma in the 1950s to appease
their depression. Because First Lady Laura Bush's performances were so devoid
of reality, fact and — there's no other way to say it — truth substance respect, watching
her is likely to make the collective American psyche feel schizophrenic and as
if we are living a duel existence, in a parallel universe somewhere far removed
from the president. It's reality versus Bushland.

Pass the psychotropics.