Jen R points me to the following from Howie Kurtz:
DeKalb, Ill.: Dear Howard, Was a question about A-Rod really appropriate during the President’s press conference last night? Why not also ask about Jessica Simpson’s weight gain or the fact I missed House…. I would expect that question from a sport reporter, but I was shocked a “serious” reporter would ask it based on the topic at hand.
Howard Kurtz: You know, there are different views of this, but I didn’t have any problem with Michael Fletcher’s question. A-Rod is not only the biggest star in baseball, he’s a huge celebrity. I mean, he hangs out with Madonna!
Maybe I should just be grateful, there were no questions about Michael Phelps (there weren’t any, right?). But I can’t be alone in thinking that a multi-trillion dollar bank bailout might be more important.
Howie also thinks Obama screwed up by giving long detailed answer to the more important questions.
Tom Hilton
Coincidentally, so does Ari Fleischer.
TenguPhule
The herds of pundits have grown fat and lazy, overbreeding and despoiling their territory.
It’s time to thin them out and pick off the weak and stupid.
Let Pundit Season commence from now till 2016.
Mr Furious
So did Obama answer the A-Rod question with, "Who let you in here? Can I have a real question from a real reporter? Next? Yes, Helen…"
Did that moron forget that the Shoulda-Been-Baseball-Commissioner President left office already?
Dave
Yes. What we need are the detailed answers for the non-important questions. 3,000 words on A-Rod!
Rainy
They’ve been saying he gives long answers since the campaign. I’ve always thought it was a stupid critique. If you don’t like listening to a detailed answer then maybe you shouldn’t be asking the fucking question then. This is not elementary school.
The Moar You Know
That’s interesting. I would have fired him on the spot if he’d been working for any news organization that I ran. I wonder why the media cares so little for factual, pertinent news?
AnneLaurie
Howie Kurtz should get TL; DR embroidered on all his ties in a readable-yet-tasteful font. Or maybe it can be incorporated into a not-ostentatious crest on the jacket he wears to press conference to show how much he respects the trappings of political office, though not the actual work involved in governing. Or, then again, we can just brand the letters across his forehead, and that of his fellow Media Village Idiots, so that we’ll know how hard they’ve worked to destroy our civilisation even before they start flapping their mouths.
Kurtz doesn’t even rise to the level of human pilot fish — he’s a lamprey on our body politic!
d0n Camillo
It would have been nice if the American public could have seen what a useless bunch of gobshites the Washington media were before we fell into the worst financial crisis since the depression. Now however I think that folks like Howie are going to find out just how much people who have either lost their jobs or are about to lose their jobs want to see President Obama answering questions about A-Rod and or Madonna.
The Other Steve
I always thought my Physics professor in college gave too long of answers too.
It’s the reason I got a D in Physics.
Andrew
I actually do have some serious questions about A-Rod’s hair:
What the fuck? Who the fuck thinks those ridiculous highlights look good? Seriously, who?
Bonus questions:
Madonna? What the fuck?
TR
Kurtz probably thinks the president is obligated to answer in 20 words or less.
Whatever. If Kurtz thinks he’s doing something wrong, it must be right.
Jen R
I wouldn’t actually have minded a question about Michael Phelps if it had been in the context of an intelligent discussion about the insane War on Drugs — hey, stop laughing!
Mr Furious
@Andrew: Who the fuck thinks those ridiculous highlights look good? Seriously, who?
Roger Clemens thinks they look bitchin’.
TheHatOnMyCat
Well, he’s right. For the blogs, he should have had the courtesy to give short, snappy answers, like
"I got this, biatches. Simmah down nah."
"Spend here, spend now."
"I got your tax cuts right here." (steps out from behind podium with hand on crotch)
"We won, get over it." [ this was de rigueur just a few years ago, why not now? ]
"Sarah Palin wants the stim money. That’s good enough for me."
"I can smooth out John McCain’s face faster than that old fart can design an alternative to my plan."
etc
gwangung
So they can fit it into the station promos for TV news.
Frakkin’ idiots.
Cain
@Mr Furious:
Personally, he should ignore the question and just call on Helen anytime someone asked a dumb question.
cain
Michael D.
@Rainy:
We live in a country with a super-short attention span – one whose major news outlets, even though Obama could be president for the next 8 years, believes that what is most important is the first 100 days.
So we shouldn’t be surprised when people don’t want details.
Jon H
"Madonna? What the fuck?"
Some people find the Crypt Keeper attractive, I guess.
joe from Lowell
Bonus questions:
Madonna? What the fuck?
I suspect the pleasure at being able to say "I nailed Madonna" makes the actual pleasure of the act immaterial.
Hedley Lamarr
It certainly was a dumb question. As the questioner sat down, the talking head behind him could be seen to roll his eyes.
It’s a shame Helen Thomas could not get an answer from Obama whether there already was a nuclear power in the ME.
TR
Hard to say. But the next time the newspapers start wondering why they’re dying off, maybe we should point them to this sort of stupidity.
This is Darwinian selection in action. The weaker, dumber media organisms are just going to die off.
gbear
Obama actually sidestepped the bank question a couple of times last night because he didn’t want to hog Geithner’s spotlight, not that it justifies a question about baseball.
I wonder if Obama got any questions about The Grammys and celebrity drug use during his Florida town hall?
DougJ
That would be change I can believe in.
joe from Lowell
Personally, he should ignore the question and just call on Helen anytime someone asked a dumb question.
I like it.
"Mr. President! Mr. President! Do you feel that the press’s attention to Joe the Plumber is robbing your effort to keep the economy from collapsing of its momentum?"
Cocks head. Looks up and the left. Forehead wrinkles. Slight head shake. Slight sigh. Annoyed voice: "Helen?"
Joshua Norton
Who is wrong more often? Kurtz, Kristol or Halperin?
Jim Pharo
This is an excellent example of the pernicious effects of bias. Young Mr. Kurtz just reacts out of tribal loyalty that OF COURSE the A-Rod question was appropriate.
Wonder whether he would have the same view if the HuffPo blogger asked the same question. Me thinks not.
A lot of sloppy analysis stems from bias. "Shoe On the Other Foot" is a decent way to check for it.
Oh, and Howie is a dope. Which doesn’t help, does it?
Zifnab25
If I had a subscription to The Washington Post, I’d have cancelled it and picked up People. Because, as previously stated, Madonna? WTF?
ricky
Silly Rabbits. Steinbrenner’s reinstatement into baseball after his criminal conviction for contributions to Nixon was a direct consequence of Ford’s pardon of Nixon. Which begot Iran Contra. Which begot Bush torture. And if Obama does not prosecute Bush, we are all implicated. And remember, Ford served on the Warren Commission. So it was a perfectly legitimate question and no, my tinfoil beanie does not have a Yankee’s logo.
Tom Hilton
@Michael D: maybe I’m just seeing what I want to see, but I really do think one of the reasons Obama won is that he talked to us as if we were grownups. I also think the general public’s tolerance for longish answers (especially when they’re clear and logical) is much greater than the press corp’s.
But I could be wrong.
gbear
Overall, was asking Obama a baseball question any stupider than asking him to explain why he’d already failed at bi-partisanship?
Michael D.
@Tom Hilton: I think a LOT of the reason Obama won was because:
1. The alternative was euwwwww!
2. Bush
That’s not to say I don’t think he’ll be a good president. I really do. I just have an opinion about how he won. I’m also glad it was someone as smart and mature as Obama – because I think a tick could have run on the Dem ticket and beat McCain/Palin.
DougJ
I don’t really buy that. Palin was scary but McCain was by far the strongest candidate the Republicans could have fielded. The media likes him, a lot of independents like him.
It it had been Mitt or Huck, this thing would have been in double digits.
NonyNony
@Cain:
The problem is, he didn’t want to answer her question when she asked it. If he turned to her every time he gets a stupid question, he’s going to have to answer all kinds of uncomfortable questions. And that may not be a behavior he particularly wants to encourage.
I mean, it’s a behavior I’d like to encourage – I’d like to force the entire White House Press Corpse to sit in a room with 30 years of footage of Helen Thomas asking questions of various Presidents and see if we could embarrass them into becoming something resembling a functional group of reporters. But Obama probably likes getting the stupid softball question from time to time – at least as much as anyone else who is perpetually in a hotseat does at any rate.
SGEW
How about a young nerdy liberal black guy from Chicago with a seriously foreign-sounding name whose father was an atheist goat-herder from Kenya?
[I still can’t get over it, to tell the truth]
fredrick of hollywood
One of the problems with our media is that they operate within space and time constraints. Print reporters only get so many column inches, and electronic reporters only get so much airtime. So a culture has evolved wherein the 30-second snappy answer is valued above all else, even if it is utterly lacking in substance. This breeds intellectual laziness, and today’s media is all the proof we need that things need fixing. It’s the reason that I so much prefer hanging out in the blog world.
Steve V
Limbaugh was complaining about Obama’s answers being long too. I think Kurtz conveys talk radio’s messages (in a more genteel fashion of course) pretty consistently, including on this.
Wile E. Quixote
@TenguPhule
Bag limit? Bounty? Is it illegal to bait them by putting out a coffee buffet or sending fake invitations to an NRO cruise? Also what do we do with them once we’ve bagged them? They’re not good eating and from what I hear they’re hell to clean.
NonyNony
@DougJ:
I think this is true, but I also don’t think that invalidates Michael’s 1-2 punch.
I think it was nearly impossible for any Republican to win this last cycle. The only reason the Republicans even had a shot was because the Democrats were either going to nominate a woman or a black guy – making it an unprecedented sort of election and a test to see if we’d grown past our sexism/racism enough to vote for the not-old-white-dude.
McCain drove it closer than it might have been otherwise – and had he selected a real VP candidate and not built a campaign around being an erratic nutjob whose every action was unpredictable from week to week it might have been a complete nail-biter on election night instead of wrapping up by 11pm. But since he did pick "Putin rears his head’ as his VP and he DID build a campaign about being the most erratic and unpredictable nutjob from week to week, the ewwww reaction stands.
R-Jud
@SGEW:
Nope, me neither, because of stuff like this:
Persia
At least the second stupid question has something to do with Obama and his frickin’ job.
TenguPhule
No limit, we can take up collections for the bounties.
All’s fair, including hunting from helicopters using high power scope rifles.
Stuff and Mount as Trophies.
Xecky Gilchrist
@SGEW: How about a young nerdy liberal black guy from Chicago with a seriously foreign-sounding name whose father was an atheist goat-herder from Kenya?
Heh. That’s silly, but "peanut farmer" was ludicrous.
h/t Bloom County
Napoeleon
@TenguPhule:
I can’t wait until I see my first bagged journalist strapped to some stations wagon’s roof rack as the hunters come back from the hunt.
SGEW
heh heh. "peanut farmer."
I miss Bloom County. Very much. G’night, moon.
Also, @R-Jud: Yeah. I don’t know how much of it is my own multi-ethnic background, but that guy’s post about his kid gave me some serious misty-eyed joy when I first read it. I mean – wow. Yeah.
fledermaus
Just wait. S. Carolina sherriff just charged 8 more people with this BS. Good thing there isn’t any real crime to investigate
DougJ
The Lincoln story reminds me a bit of this from Bill Simmons:
JoyceH
Tell you what, I was watching the pre-news conference coverage on MSNBC, and Chris Matthews asked his two punditizers, "Will Obama get an A Rod question?", and the two punditizers responded, oh of course he will, no way around it. And I was all HUH?
So I watched the news conference and there were all these substantive questions about economic recovery and foreign policy, and me, I’m thinking, "Ha, take THAT, punditizers!" — and then came the A Rod question.
I sadly decided it must be a Guy Thing and I would never understand. It rather relieves me to see that some Guys think it was a stupid question too.
Krista
Fixed. And if he did that, I think other countries would implement a "Barack Obama" day in celebration.
The Moar You Know
@Steve V: Of course he was. Makes it damned hard to go off on a five-minute rant full of impressive-sounding words that are only intended to make the speaker sound intelligent when the guy you’re criticizing is, by nature of his long answer, getting equal time. If any of Rush’s zombie-farm of an audience is actually listening, they might notice that the scary black guy is actually making sense – and Rush is not.
And Rush can’t afford to have that happen.
Krista
DougJ, that Simmons story is delightful. I think I really would have liked that kid.
kay
I have to admit, it’s not generous, but I thoroughly enjoy Obama’s clipped, Chicago-style speech.
Bill Clinton spoke in neat paragraphs, but I got tired of the southern accent. The fake-Texan thing that followed was just pure punishment. It’s been a while since we had a President who does not soften or bury the ends of words.
I always brighten up a little when I hear Chicago in Obama’s speech. He hits the last consonant hard. That word ENDS.
Mike in NC
All are wrong all of the time, but Kristol is the wrongest! (Makes no sense but the point stands.)
Joshua James
That A-Rod Question really pissed me off, I blogged about it this morning … Obama Presser … I Know You’re Dealing With A Lot of Shit, Mr. President, But Can I Ask You About Something That Ain’t Important At All?
Really, with everything facing the nation, the question on a reporter’s lips at our new Presidents FIRST Press Conference is about his feelings regarding a baseball player’s use of steroids in the nineties?
I think the guy that asked that question shouldn’t be allowed back.
Svensker
It absolutely makes sense. Kristol is by far the wrongest, even tho they’re all wrong all the time. He GRINS wrong.
Krista
And let me just add: Madonna? Really?
randiego
thanks for diving into Kurtz so I don’t have to.
I think the stupidity of the A-Rod question has legs… it was a big topic of conversation at the office today. Everyone was like WTF?
MeDrewNotYou
One of the reasons I fell in love with Obama in the first place was because hearing him answer a question is like being in class with a professor who enjoys teaching. He takes forever because he knows what the hell he’s talking about.
It makes me tingly.
bartkid
>I mean, he hangs out with Madonna!
I look forward to a slew of Sandra Bernhard and Guy Ritchie questions during this administration.
My thought was along the lines of Comment #3:
>Did that moron forget that the Shoulda-Been-Baseball-Commissioner President left office already?
Y’know, someone who ran the Texas Rangers, y’know the team on which ARod had played.
jake 4 that 1
@SGEW: No shit. That’s why no matter how many dimwitted stenographers and tooth whitener addicts say dumbshit or defend the dumbshit burped out by their peers, I still think America’s a fairly fucking groovy place.
Although the stupid in Kurtz’s comment did make my eyes bleed a little.
AnneLaurie
Some future theoretician is going to get his PhD explaining how the Kurtz-Kristol-Halperin Triad manages to be so wrong so consistently that they’re already wrong on stuff they won’t say for long periods into the future.
If we could only break the KKH Triad, we could probably build FTL spaceships!
And once we’ve helped eliminate the deficit by auctioning licenses to hunt down & kill these Media Village Idiots… they will make excellent compost, thereby helping reduce our reliance on petroleum-based fertilizers.
Mnemosyne
@kay:
Personally, I’m waiting for Obama to make Casimir Pulaski Day a national holiday.
Balconesfault
@MeDrewNotYou:
Exactly. And if it’s something he doesn’t know … he doesn’t start stammering around like some goofball that isn’t sure if he’s supposed to know it so he best bluff for awhile. He says he doesn’t know. And he doesn’t even have to talk about known unknowns to do so.
Jess
@Krista:
see Here you go, Krista!
Never mind–the link didn’t work.
Jess
Krista,
Try this for some awesome stimulus (about 1/3 down the page).
wilfred
No mention of who asked a question after the A-Rod one? The only reporter with the guts to make a President nervous – Helen Thomas:
After sliding past both questions, Helen tries to follow-up:
Q Why do we have to pick —
OBAMA: Okay, all right.
MNPundit
If you ask about Michael Phelps at least say … "Does the outpouring of support for him by the American People indicate it’s time to rethink drug policy towards marijuana?"
Johnny Pez
Mistah Kurtz, he dead.
Madonna
DougJ —
Hope you will come to my next concert!!!
big love
arod
KYW is a fu–ckng mess. As anyone who knows knows–Susan Schiller, Peter Dunn, Michael Colelran, Mike Archer, Cesar Aldama, Leslie Moonves needs to CLEAN HOUSE AND FIRE their fuckg asses. For god-s sakes, they’re all idiots, Alycia LAne, LArry, and the mumbo jumbo management that misses stories elft and right and tape recordds Channel 6 shows every single day at the behest of News Director Susan Schiller since she don’t know how to run a damn news room. The woman was late sending camera crews to the McGReevey scandal when it broke because–get this–she didn’t know it even happened until channel 2 in NYC called her and tipped her off and til Schiller saw the report on Channel 6. FU–ng Fools. God Bless CBS Idiots
ALSO Mary Cavallero Former Aftra Lawyer was planning to sue CBS and Peter Dunn several years ago. Cavallero wanted to bring a class action suit against CBS and DUNN and Nanacy Amoroso (the station Consultant that ALL on air talkent at Channel 3 called Station INSULTANT ) because Amoroso wanted all female on air talent to look like “whores” and like “they’re fucking someone.”
Reporters like Karen Scullin (now in Minnesota) and Anne MArie Green and others complained that Amoroso was harrassing female talent in ways that the male talent were not subjected to. JUst Ask good OLE DICK STANDISH. Standish will tell you how horrible Schiller (News Director ) and Dunn were in subjecting women to intimidating standards at KYW. Ask Bev Williams too. She Constantly was approached by on air talent by what to do if on air female talent should contact Dennis Swanson (then stations manager) about what to do about the harrassment at Channel 3