and I repeat, that public criminal behavior is always and has always been fair game. They went into public restaurants and drank. It’s against the law in Texas. Their daddy signed said law, so they should have been aware of it. Even if they weren’t the first time, certainly 2 weeks after taking the consequences in court and paying fines and fees should have reminded them.
Kids make mistakes ???/ gee what a concept. Of course, Texas’ zero tolerance laws do not make that allowance.
Actually, manny, both Bush daughters were subsequently cited for the latest incident. Jenna got charged for passing off somebody else’s I.D. as her own, and Barbara got tagged for M.I.P. They were both charged last Thursday, two days after the Chuy’s manager called the cops.
As for Albert Gore III, I’m far from offended that you brought it up. Heck, the whole point of this thread is whether it’s appropriate for the press to discuss the transgressions of the children of politicians, and it’s awful hard to do that in a vacuum. I would, however, point out two actual and one possible distinction between Al 3’s alleged behavior and that of the Bush girls:
There’s a big (and legitimate, IMO) difference in public interest between the children of a president and the children of a vice president. Shoot, I can’t even name or remember seeing a picture of Dick Cheney’s kids, and I have never heard a thing about them other than the stuff about that one daughter’s sexual orientation.
Al III is/was a minor. The Bush girls are adults. Privacy concerns are greater–and generally more respected by the press–for persons under the age of 18.
The Bush girls were involved in a criminal investigation and have now been charged with breaking the law. AFAIK, little Al was neither investigated nor cited by the police.
BTW, what was Teddy Roosevelt’s line about his famously hellraising daughter? Something like “I can manage the country or I can manage Alice, but I most assuredly cannot do both.” Just goes to show that this is hardly a new issue.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/abc/20010604/pl/chuys010604_1.html
http://www.salon.com/news/col/cona/2001/06/05/hypocrisy/index1.html
http://www.arizonarepublic.com/arizona/articles/0603montini03.html
I love this one…
http://www.bettybowers.com/newsclinton.html
Not exactly the on topic but does relate somehow…
http://www.spinsanity.org/columns/20010604.html
Needs2know
Surely you jest, wring? Minors get busted all the time for alcohol offenses, and I guarantee that quite a few of them get busted again within two weeks of sentencing on the first charge. I bet you’ll have a real hard time providing a news story resembling the coverage . A one-paragraph note in the small-town crime blotter, maybe. A ten-inch story on the inside of the front section of a major metropolitan newspaper? Fat chance.
Sam Stone: Thanks for repeating the blather I heard on right-wing talk shows last week about how the press was saturating the public with coverage of the Bush Bust. Would you care to provide any examples that would demonstrate this is actually the case in the mainstream press? Tabloids such as the NY Post don’t count–I’m talking about serious news sources, not those that merely pander to the semi-literates seeking the latest celebrity news. And I’m not looking just for stories, since I thik this is, to a limited extent, a newsworthy story. I mean prominent, front-page coverage or the first segment of a news broadcast.
well, actually if you want to discuss it, it’s been my experience that if you get re-arrested for a crime so quickly after being in court for the same sort of offense, you don’t get bail set quite so quickly. and yes, for alcohol offenses. do I have data? no, that’s generally not a reported kind of thing ('how many misdemeanants, upon getting re-arrested within x period of time get this or that treatment by the press/courts etc.)
although this bothers me, too.
The call to 911 was probably the reason the news got out so quickly, but it also seems clear that the prosecution would have gone on no matter how it was handled (a restaurant will suffer extreme penalties for allowing underage drinking to go on). So, the news shouldn’t have come out so quickly, the arrests would have happened anyhow, and as such are fair game for reporters.
wring:
Of course it’s always available to be publicized. And it ought to be available. But take your hot nightgown chick – does the fact that she got more coverage than, say, an escapee who is dangerous make you feel better or worse about the quality of journalism in your area? Again, I’m not arguing for a new law, and I don’t think dirtbags like Matt Drudge ought to be sued when they print crap like this (assuming it’s true, of course). I just think the world would be a better place if the mainstream media didn’t play along and if people generally rejected attempts to lower the standards of covering private individuals. In short, I want you to do more than shrug! That’s all.
Heh. Maybe in Lansing, Michigan. In New York, people routinely get arrested for violent crimes and then commit and are charged with more violent crimes whilst out on bail. Unless somebody dies (as happened last week), the press often doesn’t bother. In fact, only some of the murders committed here get press. Does front-paging a coed with a fake ID still seem proportionate?
Oops. Sorry, wrong verb tense. At the time the Post and the News printed their front pages, no criminal charges at all had been filed. My bad.
I think it’s both. These guys want to sell more newspapers, and nice juicy scandals sell. Since any potential scandals in the actual White House are of the monetary and hard-to-understand and doesn’t-really-sell-papers mode, the press went after the kids. They miss Bill Clinton, I think. In fairness, they miss him regardless of whether any given paper is liberal or conservative. The Post, for example, is conservative, and they played this bigger than anyone. They want that juicy personal scandal, and they’ll trash anyone to get it. Again, I just think the world would be a better place if they at least stuck to trashing people who seek the public limelight.
minty green:
Well, first things first – The New York Post is, for better or worse, the country’s 14th largest newspaper.. But, OK, I’ve called it a rag myself, so let’s move on. The story was also front-paged in the Daily News (6th largest), and was on the front of the C-section of the Washington Post (5th largest) I think that section C that day is coverage of all things Bush, but perhaps someone from the area will have a better clue. That’s all just from memory or a quick check. You can, if you’d like, run through the large papers yourself from the list in the link to see if the archives include images of the paper’s cover or if the story on the web site indicates where it was placed in the printed copy of the paper.
I don’t watch much TV, and when I did this weekend it was mostly The Memorial, the Stanley Cup finals, and a couple of Yankee games. But I saw coverage of it on Fox News, MSNBC and the local (CBS) news.
And that’s only counting the stuff that happened the first day, before an outlet could claim to be covering the “story of the story.”
The Times, to it’s credit, stuck the story where it belonged, on page A20, until the “story of the story” became news.
wring
Me, too, but maybe for a different reason. I’m no conspiracy theorist, and I’m not one of those folks who believe that “the Dems sent someone to follow them to see what would turn up” (they exist!). But I tell ya, if you called 911 in NYC for a fake ID, the cops would be more likely to arrest the bartender than the patron! I suspect the same is true in other metropolitan areas, where 911 systems are overloaded by every idiot whose neighbor’s dog is too loud.
I suspect that the thing went down one of two ways 1) Star-struck/scared manager panics, calls 911 instead of just telling Bush to F.O. like normal, cops show up, are probably pissed that they have to do the paperwork, shrug and do their thing. 2) Manager sees notoriety will be good for business, calls 911 instead of… ba-da-bang ba-da-bing.
I think we may be posting past one another and are actually mostly in agreement. If she weren’t Jenna Bush, she would probably would not have been busted, but she is Jenna Bush, and there you go. So I have no real problem with the actual citation here, or with the fact that such citations are a matter of the public record. It’s only the undue emphasis that it’s got (and the “kid in trouble = bad parents” crowd) that bugs me.
I’m starting to wonder if Jenna did it on purpose…like she’s trying to annoy her father. Could it be?
manny yes, I suspect we’re far closer on this than apart.
RE: the nightgown lady, well around that time, the local news started ‘showcasing’ the walkaways, (complete with the graphic of prison bars) - that went on for a short bit, but they’ve decided, it seems, that it’s less newsworthy these days (especially since the Department has a ‘zero tolerance’ policy, so the ‘escape’ may in fact be some one returning home 10 minutes late, not that they shouldn’t be on time :rolleyes: )
Again, tho’ on the coverage issue - I guess where I would go with it is more of a ‘what else do you expect’? She was paraded as darling daughter during the campaign, we’d heard all about her operation last Nov/Dec., etc. If the issue was ‘this is a private family’ then why is it that we didn’t hear that plantive cry back in November, and it’s only now that the publicity is negative?
I’ve always had more respect for folks in the public eye if they took the time to shield their kids (some have managed to, unlike, for example, Sonny & Cher). Most politicians don’t. In MI, our gov and wife have done stuff like be photographed w/their triplets in identical red/white/blue stars & stripes dresses while attending the Republican convention (::cough cough, oops, there goes breakfast:: ), but cried foul ‘but leave our children alone’ when a group demonstrated in front of the governor’s mansion. (and yes, that disdain goes for all polticians parading their children on camera)
So, in summation - front page? nah. Published? at the very least you should expect that it could be, so one should act accordingly, especially if you’ve insisted on having them share the spotlight with you at conventions etc. and again, I frankly think things like their grades at school, boyfriends, medical procedures etc. should remain private, even if they were at the convention. Criminal activity, expect coverage.
Jenna? well, I wouldn’t want to be there at the next family confab. (aside to Guin perhaps she’s doing it as a pointed reminder to dad that ‘you can’t tell me what to do’, but I think it’s more likely that she got very accustomed to being able to drink whenever and whereever she pleased. She certainly was a well known face around Austin before dad went to Washington, and I doubt that these last two incidents were her first and second attempts at drinking in public. I think the stakes got higher. How do you prosecute any underage drinker when the most well known one gets by w/o any hassel? so, now they’re not giving her a pass.)
from the man who asked said this is a private affair here he is in a speech where he’s promoting his administrations “efforts to promote fatherhood”
Again, shrug. If you want the media to lay off them, my suggestion would be to stop using them yourself.
Since interest in this thread refuses to die, I just wanted to point out that there is a lengthy story on the police investigation and charges filed against the Bush girls in today’s Austin American-Statesman. No major revelations, although Jenna’s comments to the cops that night sound like those of any 19-y.o. rich kid who’s just gotten caught red-handed. Oh yeah, and there’s also the fact that Jenna is the only person in Austin this year charged with a Class C misdemeanor for using a false ID to buy alcohol. Every other one was charged with the more serious Class B version of the crime, although the authorities say there’s nothing odd about that.
The Statesman also reprinted the arrest reports here.
Jenna has pleaded not guilty, while Barbara went with no contest and got the same 8 hours of community service and alcohol awareness training that her sister got last month.
Barbara, incidentally, is apparently no stranger to fake ID’s herself. The story on the girls in this week’s Newsweek included a photo of the fake license she had confiscated by a bar employee in New Haven last fall. It’s now framed and hanging in the guy’s living room. Obviously, they didn’t call the cops on that one. Since Barbara was successful in buying her drinks at Chuy’s last week, and the bartender says she made sure everyone at the table got carded, I do wonder what kind of ID she produced this time around.
Ah, you must be talking of our Wash. Post’s Style section. That’s an interesting case, in that the Post Style section is a kinda like a blend of what most papers call the Arts section plus a People magazine style focus on personalities. There’s a rumor column that runs in that section called Reliable Sources, world-renown for breaking that White House trashing “story.” So you can get your fluff features and personality profiles, criticisms (including media crit.), art reviews and comics. In other words, a mini tabloid. The Jenna and Tonic story (thanks NY Post) made the front on two days. Thursday May 31st, it was all about her drinking troubles. I don’t think it got main feature treatment that day, but I threw all my old copies of the paper away. (If you click on the link, there’s a special treat. One of the related articles from last year is entitled “Bush Daughter’s Don’t Seek the Spotlight”).
The next day, Friday June 1st was media crit day as Howie Kurtz gets into it.
(The website organizes the stories a bit diffently. Both stories are run within a special “Politics” section.)