Where do they get these people? Was Obama’s inauguration speech unusual in that it didn’t contain any memorable lines? No, that is the norm. There are only so many "ask not what your country can do for you"s throughout all past inauguration speeches, but that is beside the point. If an explicit reference to equal rights for gays isn’t memorable, I don’t know what is. Schieffer also thinks the left will like the speech but not those on the right. Thank you, political genius! I shouldn’t be so hard on him though. Thank God we had him for a weather report on the day and for being there to remind us that what was supposed to happen did happen. But was it a good thing? I’m not so sure about that Bob, let me think about that one for a while.
It’s not an article. It’s the transcript of Schieffer’s answer to a question during a brief appearance on the evening news. I agree it’s a weak answer. Schieffer says he’s been at every inauguration since 1972, and when trying to think of a memorable line from a past inaugural address, he went with one from JFK and one from before he himself was even born. I think that shows how pointless the critique was. And yes, he was probably also wrong: I saw a lot of people who were excited about that Stonewall comment. And we really didn’t need more commentary about the pageantry of the event. Somehow that’s become a standard part of political coverage, and it’s annoying. So Schieffer didn’t offer a lot of useful commentary there.
And I would hope, that knowing he had only a brief amount of time to speak, he would have put some actual thought into what he was going to say. I’ve been watching him on and off for many years, and his best days are long gone. If that’s the best he can come up with, he should retire now before embarrassing himself any more.
To be fair, Schieffer probably strained his brain considerably before being completely certain that the speech contained neither a confession of Kenyan birth nor a resignation effective immediately.
There’s no evidence that Bob Schieffer is a conservative. The only clue there is to his political leanings is that he wrote a biography of Ronald Reagan in 1989 that was critical of the administration, at a time when the mainstream still was very friendly to Reagan. The idea that anyone who doesn’t fall over themselves to laud every platitude that falls out of Obama’s mouth as the most profound political rhetoric of our time, making all prior verbal communication irrelevant, must be a birther or out to get Obama is downright cultish. It would be exhausting to hear it from Obama’s fanboys if it weren’t so ominous.
He never does. Every time they wheel him out for commentary on what’s going on in Washington he babbles on for minutes about crap that anyone with half a brain already knows. And you can bet if he says that something is very important, it is actually quite trivial.
But he’s been with CBS for like a hundred years, so they’ll keep him on until he is too senile to fill three minutes. Like Andy Rooney.
ETA: I’ve always had the impression that he’s liberal.
And your evidence that I’m attacking Schieffer because he criticized Obama is based upon what, exactly? In fact, this has nothing to do with Obama per se. I’m saying Schieffer is an incompetent, washed-up newsman, way past his prime, and should be off the air already. If you had read further in the thread you would have seen yet another post by me where I criticize Schieffer, and have nothing at all to say about Obama. Is this that hard to comprehend? Aren’t hasty, unsupported statements like yours the thing that is really getting old?
Again, what was so hard to comprehend about the OP? Where do I mention the history, or lack thereof, of competent TV “newsreaders” from time immemorial? Talk about a waste of a post.
I’ve never felt that Bob Schieffer had a political conviction of any kind. I find his analysis to be similar to that of sports announcers: saying obvious things like the team behind will need to score more points if they have any hope of winning and that the team ahead will need to play strong defense to prevent that. But nothing really that blatantly insightful. I’ve always assumed he was a conservative because he never asks a conservative a difficult question or follows up on a bullshit answer, but the same might be said for his interviews of what passes for a liberal these days.
All in all, I’d rather listen to a home basketball commentator.
Well, this Obama supporter thought Shieffer’s criticism was kind of refreshing for a change. There wasn’t a single reference to Marxism or socialism or ruining America. I had to check twice to make sure he was talking about the president.
It’s the rare commentator who makes any real attempt to follow up when a politician evades a question. They both know it’s a two-way street. The politician needs the commentator and his show to get his message out, and the commentator needs the politician to get ratings. If a politician feels a commentator is being too hard on him and making him look bad, he knows he can always just move on to the next show. At the same time, the politician knows he must endure a bit of tough questioning to start, so the commentator can appear to be a “bulldog” and get his rewards from the exchange.
Journalists are so programmed to get soundbites these days that if there are none to be had they feel cheated.
Too much work to actually listen to the whole messge and attempt to report it. They want their one-liners.