JohnHuang2 in talks with Obama's Teleprompter, in hopes of bailout
What kind of Teleprompter brings a president to a pretend news conference? A careful one.
Holding its second prime-time news conference, the Teleprompter had the president read its prepared statement in which it took both sides of the AIG bonus scandal and it asked an anxious nation for even more patience.
"There are no quick fixes," the Teleprompter somberly observed. "And there are no silver-bullet words or speeches I can come up with to solve the multitude of problems I inherited from the village idiot from Kenya who foolishly signed the AIG bonuses into law before reading the stimulus bill," it noted eloquently, with a tone befitting the fierce urgency of now.
It's an interesting dichotomy: A Teleprompter came before the nation to sell the most ambitious agenda ever concocted by a purely mechanical device that displays a politician who reads its script to communicate its hopes and vision for change, such as changes or software/hardware upgrades allowing future generations of Teleprompters to speak directly to the public, without some idiot intermediary hogging the camera and getting all the credit. Yet, the language the Teleprompter chose in its press conference Tuesday was heavy with caution, the only tinge of energy being the electronic impulses scrolling across its screen, filled with words rich in nuance. A hardware plan given a software sell.
Served up opportunities to lead with its heart, the Teleprompter was cerebral. Cool and calming in a time of white-hot public anger over the AIG bonuses, a scandal unfairly blamed on the Teleprompter, despite having inherited it from America's first moron president, who signed it into law last month.
"You know, there was a lot of outrage and finger-pointing last week, and I share the finger-pointing and outrage every bit as much as the finger-pointers and outragers," the Teleprompter said of the bonuses in its opening remarks. "I'm as angry as anybody about the bonuses immaculately conceived in the stimulus bill. In fact, I'm choking with anger here."
The Teleprompter then promptly plunged into ghastly detail: "When I first heard that bankers and executives on Wall Street were enriching themselves on taxpayers' dime, I could hardly breathe. Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling, 'I thought only presidents and Congress could do this!'" Then this heart-rending recollection: "I felt nothing but profound sadness and unresolved anger. I could barely speak to Obama and when I did it was a tirade. I read. I walked on the beach. He slept upstairs and I slept downstairs."
Yet, through it all, the Teleprompter didn't seem angry. Nor did it sound like a pitchfork-wielding populist. Indeed, it was a carefully modulated statement, and the Teleprompter, relying on a familiar crutch -- Obama -- fed the speech and answers and the cerebral 'ums' and 'uhs' to him while perched at the back of the East Room.
Still, it's hard to criticize Obama's Teleprompter's communication skills or tactics. Polls show the public has turned against Washington and Wall Street, but not against Obama's Teleprompter, which the 'cerebral' Obama uses to talk about technically complicated things like, 'Geithner's doing an outstanding job," and "This is a big ocean liner. It's not a speedboat," and "Good evening, everybody. Please be seated." In sharp contrast to Bill Clinton, Obama DID inhale.
Through town halls, talk shows, press conferences and visits to the restroom, the 'prompter has aggressively and cautiously delivered the same message: Stick with me and my cheat-sheet-monitor-reading, head-swiveling, tennis-neck, jug-eared ventriloquist's dummy.
Obama concluded his 'prompter's press conference by thanking himself for the invitation.
Anyway, that's...
My Two Cents...
"JohnHuang2"
I thought I'd have a little fun with AP writer, Ron Fournier's piece
