It made me laugh
Talking about Bush's efforts at the press conference to cow reporters by saying their children were at risk, Dana Milbank minces,
Oscar Wilde would be proud.
(Later: Because of all the debate in the comments, here's a link to a video of Bush talking about the threat to reporter's children. It's not some vague "all our children" use. It's specific and intentional.)
"It's a danger to your children, Jim," Bush informed the New York Times' Jim Rutenberg.
Oscar Wilde would be proud.
(Later: Because of all the debate in the comments, here's a link to a video of Bush talking about the threat to reporter's children. It's not some vague "all our children" use. It's specific and intentional.)
posted by mikevotes at
9:23 PM
16 Comments:
I remember always enjoying Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young's classic song, "Teach Your Children," before I had children. I also remember enjoying the Moody Blues' "To Our Children's Children's Children" before I had ever had sex. I don't believe the Moody Blues had great, great grandchildren at the time.
Do you think perhaps sometimes people speak metaphorically about the future by referring to our children's lives rather than some generic people in the next century?
Does Vice President Gore ever speak about the dangers our children face when in fact he is referring to something theoretically happening a hundred years in the future when his children will probably already have gone to the next plane of existence?
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Wes, at 10:31 PM
Wes, I'd buy your argument if Bush was speaking metaphorically, but he wasn't.
I don't know if you watched the presser, but both this and the David Gregory children warning were very direct and intended to turn their "impertinent" questions back on them.
Later, he talks about "our children," "future genrations," and whatnot, but this was definitely not a metaphor.
It was an ugly debating tactic that turned wrong when he used it on a reporter without kids.
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mikevotes, at 10:41 PM
As you say, I didn't see the event, and perhaps his comment was supposed to be taken literally, but I've never heard of Rutenberg and had no idea he had a dog.
I would be surprised if Rutenberg knew my wife is allergic to dogs, and I certainly won't denigrate him for that.
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Wes, at 12:34 AM
Oh yeah, I'd certainly buy "the honest mistake."
I think you're missing why I'm finding this funny. This is not a "George Bush is stupid" kinda funny.
It's funny because Bush was going to the fear card yet again, and raising it to yet a new level, directly trying to put off questioners, trying to moot their challenges to his ability/decision making/leadership, by threatening their children.
A president trying to dodge a question by suggesting that a reporter didn't care as much about his own children as George Bush does, the great protector.
Only, Bush's overhyped rhetoric, he wasn't in fact "protecting" Rutenberg's children. When he looked in the basket, all that was there was a chow chow named little bear.
That's what's funny.
Way too long to explain that.
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mikevotes, at 7:22 AM
When the War Hawks say stay the course or Islamists will come here and kill your children and grandchildren, I believe they mean that literally. Just as they literally mean, if we draw down in Iraq the crazy-eyed, turbaned terrorists will follow us home... they mean.
Gore mentions dates -- 50 years for this, 100 years for that, etc. At times he does say "within our grandchildrens' lifetimes." So sometimes he refers to "our children and grandchildren" literally, and sometimes he means "those how follow us in generations to come."
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-epm, at 8:53 AM
Yeah. The hawks do sometimes use the children thing metaphorically, but they also do use it as a rhetorical device.
In this case, it was clearly intended directly to Rutenburg.
You're right, EPM, the difference is certainly between the vague and broadening phrase "our children," and the very different, threatening and specific application "your children."
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mikevotes, at 9:16 AM
Mike when I watched clips from the press conference where the President mentioned the reporters children, I was reminded that I have seen him do this tactic before.
During a Matt Lauer interview in the Oval Office he did the same thing. He was standing too close, with body language that one could interpret as intimidating and telling Matt that his children would be endangered if his policies were not followed. I wish I could remember the date; MSNBC had a clip of that interview at one time.
I view his tactic as a poll-tested intimidation technique. Dewy-eyed kittens came in second.
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Anonymous, at 9:58 AM
madmustard, I remember that...
I re-watch the presser clips and I figured out why Bush's "your children" comments were so disturbing to me. What he's really saying is "why do you hate your children?" It's a variant of the "why do you hate America?" meme that's used to stifle reasoned dissent.
Bush is conveying not only concern for my children's wellbeing, but equally, he's conveying concern for my fitness as a parent.
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-epm, at 10:31 AM
Mustard, I don't remember that. I remember the Lauer interview, but I don't remember that incident.
But, I would think the tactic is far more useful one on one rather than throwing it out at a news conference.
Question: With all the obviously preplanned fear talking points, was that a planned action?
....
EPM, that's a good expression of what I've been thinking about this.
The implication is that George Bush cares more about your own children than you do.
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mikevotes, at 11:23 AM
-epm you nailed it, that's exactly what it is. You put into concise language, what was knocking around in my head.
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Anonymous, at 11:27 AM
Hi,
If I sound like a hawk or major Republican backer, you may want to consider the prism through which you view me.
In fact, I disagree with President Bush on many issues, not the least of which is immigration and the continued pork policies that Republicans swore they would end when they took over Congress from the Democrats. Let's face it. The Republicans had their chance and blew it. I would actually like to see the Democrats learn from all the past mistakes and be better, but it looks like more of the same bloated budgets forever.
I believe that when President Bush flew onto that aircraft carrier and declared victory, we should have pulled our troops and let the chips fall where they may. On the way out the door, I would have put the Kurds in charge of the whole damned country of Iraq and essentially told the rest of those mad bastards to either go along with the Kurdish leadership or prepare to be bombed into the stone-age. Now, does that really sound like a hawk to you? Okay, I guess it does. As you can see, in a pole, if asked was I happy about the way the war, I would say no, but certainly not for the same reasons as many on the left.
Nonetheless, I give the president credit for understanding the scope of the problem we face. Hundreds of millions of Islamo-fascists around the world hate freedom, democracy and life itself. They consider themselves to be on a mission from God to destroy all of that and more. Ironically, the people who rely most on the freedoms our great country provides and who would be suffocated under a Muslim theocracy are the ones who seem to understand the threat the least.
This is not, as we like to pretend, a tiny fringe element. The children have been raised in schools where Imams told them the United States is the great satan and all things American are evil. This brainwashing will carry forward for several generations. Where we respect life, they honor death. Where we love freedom, they would force you to believe exactly as they do, and if you're a woman, you are totally screwed in every way imagineable...and then you'll get stoned for that.
President Bush is not an eloquent speaker. I heard that when he ran in his first election in Texas, his opponent belittled him for using ten dollar, Ivy League words that proved he wasn't a real Texan, and he vowed to never lose an election like that again. He began trying to talk like the people who would elect him.
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Wes, at 11:31 AM
Bingo! I found the Lauer interview on YouTube.
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Anonymous, at 12:15 PM
Cool Mustard. Thanks.
It wasn't necessary, I believed you, but thanks.
...
Wes, I don't really want to launch into an argument because I don't want to spend the time fighting it back and forth. (Plus, neither of us will convince the other.)
But I disagree with your analysis. I find it a bit too simplistic.
First, "Islamofascism" is a virtually meaningless phrase that attempts to cobble together groups from all across the spectrum from Al Qaeda, to Hezbullah, to the Muslim Brotherhood, to Jundullah, to the Pakistani Kashmiri groups, to a million other Islamist political movements.
Their causes are equally diverse but often quite specific having very little to do with the US.
That term is applied as a political mechanism in an effort to cobble all the groups the US doesn't like into one ubervillain.
Second, the violent elements in these movements do represent a remarkably small "fringe." That is not "pretending."
There is no question there is a broader movement that includes a substantial percentage that supports the causes, but the violent groups represent (in most places) a remarkably small number of people. (And we should be thankful for that.)
In Iraq for instance, where the fighting is at its hottest, estimates are between 20,000 and 50,000 Sunni men under arms from within a population of 6 to 7 million.
By casting your net for villains so widely, (hundreds of millions?) you are needlessly creating enemies from within the groups that we need to access and pull into our camp if we are ever to win this ideological war.
That is the battleground we are fighting for. To stop making new terrorists within that hundreds of millions.
And treating those hundreds of millions as enemies, will only create more terrorists.
.....I'm not going to continue. The gulf between our viewpoints is too vast.
I'm not trying to convince you, just to outline where I am so you'll understand if I don't take the time in the future to argue all of your points.
Mike
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mikevotes, at 2:18 PM
As you say, a gulf exists between our points of view, and yet if we happen to be at ground zero when a homocidal terrorist blows himself and all around him to smithereens, semantics will become irrelevant. The Palestinians will dance in the street jubilantly as they did on 9/11 at the massive pain caused to Americans.
Within that convenient, expedient dismissal of you and I as two insignificant cogs in the American machine, semantics differenting a communist from a capitalist or a northeast intellectual from a Texas cowboy, would become irrelevant to the imam who says, "Allah be praised at the death of these evil Americans, and may this wonderful martyr find 72 virgins in heaven." The cheering throngs will have great joy at our deaths.
In being Americans, where we may freely discuss our opinions and criticize the government, where we honor life, where we can choose our own destiny, where we can worship or not worship God as we please, where we can...and this is no small matter...borrow capital to create new homes, businesses and cities where before there was only imagination, where women are free to be powerful and productive members of society, and where we are free to become whatever we aspire to be, which is a distinct advantage over most of history and most regions of the world today, we are remarkably different from those who I conveniently cobble together into a group called Islamofascists, who want to eliminate all of THAT not only for themselves and their children and/or the children of those who are their friends and acquaintences if they choose not to have children and their dog Toto (see how easily President Bush could have dodged this criticism?) but for us and the rest of Western Civilization.
You thnk our actions to stop these wackos CREATE terrorists? We have managed to create a lightening rod in Iraq, where terrorists come to take on America close to home, which is a great deal better than having them come to Los Angeles or Minneapolis, but after Spain tried to do the Rodney King solution of just getting along, this sign of weakness resulted in their trains blowing up. When I was in Frace, undoubtedly the leader of the modern day Neville Chamberlain movement, a couple of years ago, there were riots and cars blowing up all around Paris. Even people who draw cartoons are at risk from these sickos.
Long ago I went in the U.S. military to defend the American way of life, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Putting pictures of widows and children of soldiers killed in Iraq to try to bend public will against what those brave soldiers have given their lives is a cowardly disgrace.
I don't expect you to respond to my posts at all. I am simply trying to enlighten you so that perhaps you will take time to think about what you "believe" rather than regurgitating simplistic rhetoric you heard from some professor or the New York Times. I don't march in lock step with anyone, and I have come to all of my opinions honestly by contemplating all sides of issues of importance to me. Then again, I fully understand that you will probably delete my response without reading it.
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Wes, at 8:33 AM
Well, I think you've pretty well established where you are.
You refuse to admit that the war in Iraq is generating more terrorists than it's stopping, a point which has been made by every US intelligence arm as well as many others around the world.
You knee jerk my disfavor of the Iraq war, to a desire not to go after terrorists because you've been propagandized to that point of view.
And, just as a testament to your selfrighteous painting of me as caricature, you write that last line.
On what do you base that? Haven't I read and responded to every comment you've left?
It is apparently important for you to believe that my point of view is not reasoned.
I guess that's the only way to still believe what they're selling.
Mike
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mikevotes, at 7:23 AM
Oh, and I'm not going to check the comments on this post anymore.
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mikevotes, at 8:42 AM
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