I don’t know where you’re getting this conclusion, or if you thought it would anger me, but it’s simply too wrong to be funny or annoying.
Oh, no.
Chris Wallace sandbagged Clinton; Clinton outmaneuvered (and generally wiped the floor with) Wallace.
BTW, I’ve never seen Chris Wallace before or since. Does he always come across that oily?
Apparently even his defenders think he has a perpetual smirk, which they seem to regard as some type of deformity, out-of-bounds for comment. So, I would have to assume that he does.
Its 40 days before midterm elections; FOX employees can’t hold human form for 365 days of the year, ya know.
Sorry to hear about that sense of humor-ectomy, dude. I hear with therapy you can get some of it back. I’ll explain: We’re arguing about something entirely subjective that cannot be proved. We have different opinions, that’s all. But that fact that you think you have “proven” your point is rather funny.
I’ve heard this before and never understood it - you make an especially lame joke and somehow it’s my failing if I don’t laugh? Okay, pal, if that gets you through the night. :rolleyes:
You think I have to prove Clinton didn’t have a hissy-fit? All I have to do cite quotes where appropriate and challenge the unconvincing claim that he did have a hissy-fit. I don’t believe that you believe what I’m doing is funny - I believe rather that weak ridicule is the only weapon you have left in your never-well-stocked arsenal.
Sorry for the long delay in my response. I only just noticed this idiocy from acsenray:
If I was in fact an abuser of puppies and children, then yes, this would be a hard but fair question to ask of me.
As has already been pointed out in this thread, Clinton admits that he didn’t do enough to get Bin Laden. Thus, asking him why he didn’t do more is a fair question.
Finally, fuck you for mentioning my name and child abuse in the same sentance. I don’t care what kind of dumb ass point you were trying to make. That’s just out of line you fucking jackass.
Could someone point me to a cite of Clinton saying he didn’t do enought to catch Ben Ladin?
Does he say more than something like “I didn’t do enough, by definition, because I didn’t catch him”? Because that’s not much of an admission. Is that all we’re talking about, though, when we say Clinton has “admitted he didn’t do enough?”
-Kris
It’s a standard example of an unfair question. The assumption of the use of the example in thie context is that you are by no means an abuser of children. By asking the question the way s/he did, the poster was showing they have faith that you are not an evil person, at least not that kind of evil.
Absolutely no denigration of your character was intended, and absolutely no denigration of your character is implied, and no denigration of your character is understood from the text by any reasonable reader.
So your angry response is unwarranted. And you just might be an unreasonable reader.
-FrL-
It’s really late in the thread for me to jump in now. But I just want to say that I watched the video yesterday and I actually have much, much more respect for Bill Clinton than I did last week.
I think that interview was a big positive for him. I didn’t see a hissy fit. I saw a man who is very pationate about what he did and is very frustrated with partisan politics, fingerpointing and bickering.
And until that interview and his explanation, I have never understood why democrats always say “George Bush had 9 months to go after Bin Laden…”. I always thought that was such a spin and they must have some nerve to say that when they had years and years and did nothing.
I was very satisfied with Clinton’s explanation of his own actions and the limitations he worked with and tried to work through.
You know this country would be so much better off if Democrats and Republicans would just stop the bullshit and say "We both care about the safety of this country. We both want to do everything in our power that we believe is just and right to protect the country’s interests and ensure the safety of our citizens. I believe that the best way is to [some explanation] while the other party believes [some other method]…
Instead they want to constantly point out what the other party “didn’t do”. That’s not the way to fucking get anything done. Dont sit there and put all your effort into convincing the country that your opponent doesn’t care about the safety of the country. That is just wasted valuable time and resources that could be spent looking for a fucking solution.
Bill Clinton did everything he could and that he thought was prudent at the time to ensure the safety of the country.
George Bush is currently doing everything he can that he thinks is right and prudent to ensure the safety of the country. They should get together and work out a goddamn plan to make things happen. Just admit the mistakes they BOTH made and how to improve on them and prevent them in the future.
Instead, all I hear is “Bill Clinton just let Bin Laden go. He is such a pussy and doesn’t care about terrorists”
“George Bush knew 9-11 was gonna happen because Clinton told him. He should have prevented it when he took over”
Its all such bullshit. What president would not have wanted to protect his country? Mistakes were made by everyone. It’s not like there’s one perfect party and one fucked up party. God I fucking hate politics and the restrictions it imposes on our leaders.
RTFM. 
From the transcript:
Further, he even admits that it was a legitimate question:
Now, I think he’s off base about Fox not asking tough questions of Bush’s administration. However, that’s a secondary issue. Even if we assume Clinton to be correct that Fox never asks tough questions of Republicans, that has nothing to do with asking this fair question of Clinton. It was a fair question. I can see it. Clinton can see it. Any reasonable reader of the transcript or viewer of the interview can see it. Why can’t some of you?
Reasonable reader? One thing we don’t have a shortage of around here is unreasonable readers. Of course no denigration was intended. You’d have to be a fool to think there was. However, that doesn’t mean that a bit of anger at the bottom of my post was unwarranted. There just wasn’t any reason to go there.
In any case, his whole point was stupid as I’ve shown even Clinton admits in the transcript that the question was fair. That was mainly what I was responding to.
So, in your reading, did Clinton believe that his anger was totally unwarranted? If you can see that this is a silly reading of the transcript, what do you think HE THINKS warranted his anger?
Daniel
Yeah, whatever. Looks that operation was more successful than I thought…
Now you’re moving the goalpost. The issue we were discussing, and which I continued to discuss, is whether or not Clinton could have answered the question well in less time, thus saving more time for the other issues. I think he could have.
“Hissy fit” is not really defined anywhere anyway, is it? Call it whaterever you want, but he got agitated at the interview and went into an ad hominem attack. That is uncontestable.
Is it too late to admit that for the last week I thought this controvery was about Chris MATTHEWS? And that I was kind of annoyed by the charactization of him as a right-wing attack dog? Because although Chris Matthews might be a barking bufoon I don’t think he’s exactly a partisan Republican? And that only after wading through half the thread and saw references to his dad–Mike Wallace–did I realize we were talking about someone else? Chris Matthews, Chris Wallace…easy to confuse, right? Right? Anyone else with me here?
Note that I have no idea if Chris Wallace is a right wing attack dog, or if he has a deformed face, I’ve never seen his show.
But if why would Clinton agree to give an interview to a known right-wing attack dog? It doesn’t make sense…until you realize that he HOPED he’d get questioned like this and was ready to knock heads together once he was. Clinton wasn’t sandbagged, he knew what was gonna happen.
That depends entirely on your point of view. The right wingers are jumgping up and down with glee as much as the left wingers are over this thing. Certainly Clinton answered the question brilliantly. But to claim that amounts to wiping the floor with him presuposes nefarious intentions by Wallace in the first place. When he attacked Chris presonally, that just fires up both bases.
I’d say he’s just as oily as the next journalist. They all try to ask provocative questions. But oily is in the eye of the beholder. If someone had asked Bush that exact same question in exaclty the same way, you’d be praising him to high heaven.
I dunno about that. It’s partly the hair, I think – CW looks like he’s slicked his down with WD-40. Add the smirky cast of his features, and, well, ICK. He sure doesn’t have an iota of his old man’s gravitas.
At what, trolling? Please.
Sure, if the question had been submitted in advance in writing and Clinton had had a few days to compose and edit and revise and refine his reply, he might have been able to boil it down to five minutes or less. As it is, Wallace finished his question about Bin Laden at ~5:09 and Clinton finished his reply, which was interrupted several times by Wallace, at ~15:30, taking a little over ten minutes to summarize an aspect of his presidency that, according to Wallace, started as early as Mogadishu in 1993. Clinton digressed a bit talking about ABC and Fox and Wallace’s motivation for asking the question in the first place, but there wasn’t any hesitation or euphemism in his reply. The fact that the question was asked five minutes into the interview, instead of the agreed-upon minimum fifteen minutes, remains significant.
So? The agitation (heck, call it anger) was understandable and the ad hominem deserved. Coming from a politician you like, I bet you’d call it “impassioned”.
Well, there aren’t dozens of threads praising Helen Thomas around, so just being annoying doesn’t guarantee adoration or criticism. My guess is that if someone had asked Bush that question, the lengthy resultant thread would be about Bush’s reply, with the reporter’s behaviour being a secondary topic coming after all the “Bush got pwned!” jeering and the “No, he didn’t!” replies.