Ari Gets Laughed Out of WHBriefing Room

dahamsta

A little light relief. Reposted from IP. Sorry about the formatting., but you get the idea.

adam

>>> White House news briefing on Tuesday, February 25:
>>>
>>>
>>> ON CSPAN --- WH press conference with Ari ended just now. It's grim.
>>> Not
>>> much new but a reiteration of the "Saddam must disarm" and some hints
>>> that Saddam and other top Iraqi leaders might be assassinated if GW
>>> gives the executive decree.
>>>
>>> Then one tidbit floated up. A reporter asked about a French report
>>> that
>>> says Bush is offering a bundle of concessions (and I think she
>>> actually
>>> said 'buying votes') to Mexico and Colombia, granting worker amnesty
>>> and
>>> so on. Ari tap-danced. Then she (the reporter) started to press the
>>> issue by saying "they (the French) are quoting two US State Dept.
>>> Diplomats that Bush intends to give work permits to Colombia and
>>> Mexico."
>>>
>>> WOW. WOW.... Ari just drew himself up with imperious indignation and
>>> said something like "you're implying that the President is buying the
>>> votes of other nations and that's just not a consideration" or words
>>> to
>>> that effect.
>>>
>>> And guess what happened? The whole press corps, normally sheep, broke
>>> out in laughter... sweet, derisive laughter. They kept on laughing as
>>> Ari turned on his heels and strode out. Sheesh.
>>>
>>> On C-Span, go down to White House Press Briefing (02/25/2003) and
>>> click
>>> on the video. After it buffers, play from about 28 minutes forward
>>> for
>>> context, 30 minutes forward.

>>> http://www.c-span.org/
>>>

gandalf

LOL its the most popular video clip there now.

Poor old Ari scarpered fairly quickly after that gaff eh

Gandalf.

The Cigarette Smoking Man

That's a classic

Here's a direct link to the clip:
http://video.c-span.org:8080/ramgen/edrive/iraq022503_whpb.rm

OT: Joe Lockhart was a much better press secretary, much more believable than Mr Fleischer.

DadaKopf

It's pretty significant, I think. Considering those White Shouse journalists are the elite of the elite, so dope that they're allowed in the White House would kind of imply they're pretty pro-government - otherwise they wouldn't be allowed in. We've all seen The West Wing.

The fact that they'd laugh at Fleischer - geez. Even the US government's most loyal of journalists are laughing at them.

daveirl

This post has been deleted.

therecklessone

Up until quite recently the US media has been enthusiastically pro-war. They relied mainly on government sources for their stories(read Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent to understand the significance of this), and had drastically under-estimated the extent to which the US public, and also the international community, both governments and their electorates, was opposed to the Bush administration's policy on Iraq. the anti-war protests of the last few weeks have left them looking very silly indeed, and suddenly the previously pro-Bush media is asking some very difficult questions, which the lackies in the White House are unable to answer truthfully.

About time.