WashPost: Obama Shutting Down White House Tours Isn't a Stunt, It's a 'Civics Lesson'

NewsBusters.org ^ | March 9, 2013 | Tim Graham

[Kaslin]

The front page of Saturday's Washington Post took the publicity stunt of shutting down White House tours and spun it as an educational event. The headline was “In canceled White House tours, a civics lesson: Disappointed tourists help administration show sequester’s pain.” Inside the paper, the headline was “Worthless tickets drive home government’s dysfunction.” Ahem, the tickets are free even when they are honored.

The online headline was even worse: "With canceled tours, White House teaching how democracy works." Reporter David Nakamura blamed not Obama but the "dysfunctional state of the union":

The White House tour is a civics lesson on American democracy. And starting Saturday, when 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. shuts its doors to the public, that lesson will focus on the dysfunctional state of the union.

After "bummed out" members of the public were quoted, just four lines before the story jumped off the front page, “pouncing” Republicans were allowed a rebuttal, and the word "stunt" was eventually mentioned as a Republican complaint:

Republicans have pounced, questioning why the Obama administration is ending the free, self-guided visits to a building that ultimately belongs to taxpayers.

Administration officials say the decision was made by the Secret Service, which estimated that ending the tours for roughly 11,000 people a week would save $74,000 in weekly overtime costs. That adds up to about $2 million in savings through the end of the fiscal year in September, it said.

Nakamura didn’t mention that ABC’s Jonathan Karl estimated the weekly tour cost at $18,000 a week.

[doc1019]

If the WH wookie and her worthless husband would stop taking vacations every 10 minutes a better civics lesson would be in evidence.

[Da Coyote]

And it required all three of the Obamadork’s simpleton brain.

Tune in next week for the next episode of “The Adventures of Quota Baby”.

[eyedigress]

Why the overtime? Hire enough to cover 40 hours and be done with it. Another piece of crap exposed.

[Hoodat]

This isn’t a civics lesson. It is a lesson about how spoiled children act when asked to do something they don’t want to do.

[Paladin2]

I say shut down Zer0’s golf course through a picket line.

[2ndDivisionVet]

Is The Washington Post the Völkischer Beobachter and The New York Times Der Stürmer or the other way around?

[Hardraade]

If the American people hang Zero and all who sail with him, it’ll be a civics lesson.

[BitWielder1]

The Petulant President doing a standard leftist renaming trick again.
Sorry, we've seen it before, it ain't working this time. Except on the press of course.

[blueunicorn6]

I think that a really good civics lesson would be for the Washington Post to volunteer to pay all expenses for White House Tours. What’s that old saying? Oh yeah, “Put your money where your mouth is.”

[xzins]

I could give a rat’s behind that they shut down paying money to give white house tours.

It is FRIVOLOUS spending. I want FRIVOLOUS spending stopped.

Conservatives should be jumping up and down celebrating. Instead, the idiots are offering to fund the tours, thereby proving Obama’s claim that he needed more money (taxes) to get all this supposedly “critical” stuff paid for.

Now he can defund: national endowment for the arts, PBS, EPA, etc.

[Standing Wolf]

The front page of Saturday's Washington Post took the publicity stunt of shutting down White House tours and spun it as an educational event.

If that's what passes for an "educational event," it's small wonder half the kids in the country can't read or write.

[ConorMacNessa]

What a crock! The Kenyan-in-Chief is channeling Jimmuh. Remember when the National Christmas tree was "lit" - and the entire tree remained dark except the topper?

It's not a civics lesson - it's one more stroke in a long series of diminutions of American customs, values and greatness by this Marxist poseur!



Where are the survivors of the massacre at Benghazi? The silence of the Obama Regime on this question is deafening!

Fiat Justitia, Ruat Coelum!

Genuflectimus non ad principem sed ad Principem Pacis!

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)

[Bryanw92]

>>Conservatives should be jumping up and down celebrating. Instead, the idiots are offering to fund the tours, thereby proving Obama’s claim that he needed more money (taxes) to get all this supposedly “critical” stuff paid for.

Obama understands his enemy’s psychology. He can stop the tours and know that the Right will go crazy about that and look like idiots.

I agree with you. Shut down the tours. They can close down every government building in DC to the public for all I care. Let’s start training the young people that this government is an organization that serves its own interests only and does not give a rat’s ass about the individual American.

[DustyMoment]

Lessee, the WH BELONGS to the American people. We bought it, we pay for it and we pay the maintenance on it.

Zero’s “vacations” DON’T belong to us even though we pay for them and the bullets this government is buying to keep them from us both amount to a HUGE waste of taxpayer money.

IMO, between those three items, zero can forego his “vacations” for the rest of the year and the government has quite enough bullets. But, the opportunity to visit the people’s house should NEVER be terminated because of a political pi$$ing contest.

[Kickass Conservative]

Once again reinforcing the definition of Democracy. Two Wolves and One Sheep deciding what’s for Dinner.

The Civics lesson is simple, we are a Republic, not a Democracy.

[tanknetter]

Why the overtime? Hire enough to cover 40 hours and be done with it. Another piece of crap exposed.

The overtime probably isn't even for special agents to keep tabs on the tours, but for clerks to run background checks on the visitors prior to arriving for the tour.

[gusopol3]

“Do I get my trip to the Riviera this Spring, or do you walk around with a black eye?”

[sickoflibs]

RE :”Obama Shutting Down White House Tours Isn't a Stunt, It's a ‘Civics Lesson’

Great Civics lesson. Obama got elected and this is what he cuts first. There is much to learn here for sure.

How about on cutting down on Obama Air Force One flights instead, like those around the country to warn the Sequester would be Armageddon ? That would save much more money than this does.

[eyedigress]

I should not have to duplicate this question.