Posted on 01/27/2008 6:57:51 AM PST by Mo1
Rove, White House Dispute McClellan Book Tales
By Michael D. Shear and Michael Abramowitz
Reaction has begun to the new tell-all book by former White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
Karl Rove, the subject of many of McClellan's charges, said on Fox's Hannity & Colmes last night that he disputes those charges and said McClellan sounded like a liberal blogger.
"First of all, this doesn't sound like Scott. It really doesn't," Rove said. "Not the Scott McClellan I've known for a long time. Second of all, it sounds like somebody else. It sounds like a left-wing blogger. Second of all, you're right. If he had these moral qualms, he should have spoken up about them."
Rove said that he did not recall McClellan being in many of the meetings on subjects that he criticized. He said McClellan's comment in the book that he was surprised to see Rove and Lewis "Scooter" Libby talking together is evidence of his absence from major meetings.
"Well, look, it goes to show how out of the loop he was, that he didn't think we spent much time together," Rove said. "I mean, over the course of the seven years or six years that we worked together, Scooter and I spent a lot of time first on the campaign and then when we were at the White House we were on several committees together."
The White House sloughed off the book this morning as the work of a disgruntled former staffer.
"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," White House press secretary Dana Perino said in a statement for reporters traveling with Bush in Colorado today. "For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad -- this is not the Scott we knew."
She added: "The book, as reported by the press, has been described to the president. I do not expect a comment from him on it -- he has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers."
LOL! Wrong side!
No, McClellan’s rectum is already inverted.
FOFLOL As I just read your post to sharky, I sorta felt that was what you meant. :)
Barnicle: Bloggers 'Nitwits Who Think They're Part of News Media'
By Mark Finkelstein | May 28, 2008You pathetic little people of the blogosphere. You're nothing more than "nitwits at home with [your] computers" who've deluded yourselves into imagining you're "part of the news media." Just ask Mike Barnicle. The former Boston Globe columnist broke the tough truth to us on today's Morning Joe. WaPo editorial writer Jonathan Capehart was "so glad" to agree.
Capehart was in full courtier mode to Mika Brzezinski, anchoring the show during Joe Scarborough's extended absence awaiting the birth of a child home in Florida. When executive producer Chris Licht read a viewer email critical of Mika, Capehart leapt to her defense, and it was then that Barnicle and he sniffed at the pretenders of the pajamahadeen.
CHRIS LICHT: This one is from John in Tampa: "It's shameful how Mika won't mention the Auschwitz gaffe by Obama, but she will mention everything bad about Bush and McCain. She's once again proven she is drinking the Obama Kool-Aid."MIKA BRZEZINSKI: OK, my brother, who works for the McCain campaign, I don't think he feels that way. ['Scuse me? Mika likes to use her McCain-supporting brother as a shield against criticism of her liberal bias, but here it makes no sense. Is she saying that her brother tells her that she is not an Obama fan? Did Mika mean to cite her other brother, who works for Obama, and who perhaps claims that she is at times critical of Barack? In any case, Capehart then played the courtly gentleman.] Let's bring in Washington Post editorial writer Jonathan Capehart. He joins us live from Washington this morning. Jonathan, what is the Auschwitz gaffe, and does it merit prolonged discussion?
JONATHAN CAPEHART: N-o-o-o-o, it doesn't!
BRZEZINSKI: Well, but I'm in the tank apparently if I don't talk about it.
CAPEHART [chuckling]: Well look, he mentioned, I mean it's unfortunate he mentioned the wrong concentration camp, but to blow this up into some kind of scandal of huge proportions that somehow shows that Barack Obama is not prepared to be president is really stupid. It really is stupid.
BRZEZINSKI: Well, you've got to tell that to John in Tampa.
MIKE BARNICLE: What about this theory, Jonathan, about, you know, the Auschwitz-Buchenwald flap, whatever, John McCain's misspeaking in Iraq. Shiite, Sunni. What about the theory that we in the news media have taken ourselves so seriously, because of this 24-hour news cycle that we're all involved in, that we don't give enough credit for people being over-tired, exhausted, campaigning 20 hours a day, misspeaking—including Senator Clinton at times misspeaking—and then we jump all over them. And then these nitwits at home with their computers, these bloggers, who [snorts] think they're part of the news media, can then accuse us of being soft on this candidate or that candidate. Just a theory.
CAPEHART [who laughed heartily as Barnicle blasted "these nitwits"]: Well, you're right. Both sides of this argument are correct. Look: when Senator Clinton—if Senator Clinton had said that, there'd be breaking news, we'd be talking about it for days and days and days. I think that at some point, someone has to finally say alright, look, enough. The person, the person is tired, the person has made a mistake. Let's talk about the substance of what he or she is saying. And I think the substance of what Senator Obama was saying is right: you know, talking about I think it was post-traumatic stress disorder in his, I think it was his grandfather, who had come back from World War II, came home, went up into the attic, and never left the house for six months.
That's what he was talking about, and I think if we can just—you know, Barnicle you're right, sometimes we take ourselves way too seriously and react a little too quickly to, you know, bloggers who, and I'm so glad you said that, who think that they are part of the news media, having them whip us into a hysteria, thinking this is a big story, when it's not.
Ironic that both Barnicle and Capehart would chide the news media for taking itself "too seriously," then turn around and look down their news media noses at us schlubs of the blogosphere.
Note: It was the Purple Avenger at Ace of Spades who apparently broke the story of Obama's Auschwitz confusion and Michelle Malkin who helped get it out. Keep up the good work, and maybe someday you too can be members of the real news media. You know, the kind that work at papers like the Washington Post, so straitened even its most venerable columnist is accepting a buy-out.
—Mark Finkelstein is a NewsBusters contributing editor and host of Right Angle. Contact him at mark@gunhill.net.
I dream that someday a Mars Rover will photograph a Coca Cola bottle protruding from the sand . . .
I didn’t do it!
FOFLOL. I love it, you are so clever. :)
Who are you calling small minded?
Eh?
Eh?
That I might have done.
Sorta.
Birds are easy to control.
People are vastly more difficult.
You’re not small minded.
You’re a Canadian Electro-mechanical Multi-blade Spinning Device times two.
Some bird-brains are even harder to coontrol than birds, sad to say.
If we were birds, I wonder what we would be.......
I’d be a Mourning Dove, or maybe a Blue Jay?
How about you?
Lady, I could see you as a Peacock, or a Cardinal.
Darks, I can see you as a Great Blue Heron, or maybe an Owl.
LOL!
;-)
Have you got spring where you are yet?
I am afraid to put my 3 tomato plants in the ground because we keep getting frost. :-(
It’s been cool, mid 60s to low 70s and I am loving it. Things are blooming a little late and hanging on a little longer.
Gov. GoodHair?? Mr. 39%...Popular??? Hahahaha! That's funny!
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