If you want me to soften, ok. What examples of poor decorum by past reporters did you have in mind? As I read your remarks, you were referring to the pre-TV era, right? It’s ok if the example doesn’t match exactly - I suspect that it doesn’t, but might bear investigation anyway.
Still, I stick to my position. When somebody shifts the needle in ways large and small, it should be noted. Back during the 1850s, caning your Congressional adversary was not typical behavior so the Preston Brooks incident caused much outrage in the North. What pissed them off even more though were the defenses offered by his constituents in the deep south. This is a much less egregious example of course, but my general point holds: it’s how people respond to bad behavior that can matter more.
[Er: “Conservative Pride” -the title of my post- alluded to the Daily Caller who said that they were “Proud” of their reporter, something that struck me as bizarre. See the first sentence of my post. It would have been better form to have drawn a line between that sentence and your quote. FWIW, I didn’t have the impression that you were particularly conservative and I hope I didn’t give an inappropriate impression. If so, I retract it and apologize for slathering you with an overly wide brush.]
Didn’t the former spokesperson for President Bush come out and support what the current President did by saying “You don’t interrupt the Presidents speeches.” That tells me the guy doing the interrupting wasn’t terribly bright.
Except he was just interrupting during a speech, and didn’t ask a serious question. Which makes it “heckling” in the eyes of any reasonable person, although obviously not in the eyes of your ilk.
I’m not sure Clothy has an ilk. He’s pretty much in a class all by himself…a hard-right dripping-contempt-for-religious-people-atheist. He’s like a cross between Joe McCarthy and Der Trihs.
Anybody know what Munro actually said? I can’t find a transcript and in the video, I can only make out Obama’s side of it. And with all due respect, he’s no Bob Newhart.
I’ve often wondered whether the man keeps a tu quoque file so he can trot out “but but but!” examples whenever one of his own behaves badly. The initial research would be a pain, of course, but in the long run, what a timesaver.
You’re an idiot, which is why nobody’s going to take your lame apologetics seriously. He interrupted the speech with and then argued with Obama when Obama started to answer the questions he’d yelled out during the speech. That demonstrates little interest in the “serious questions” because it’s heckling. If you interrupt a guy by accident, you shut the fuck up and apologize and don’t interrupt several more times. This is an elementary concept.
I don’t see a full transcript of Munro’s hollering, but I see it did include something about “foreigners over American workers” and then (when Obama said it wasn’t time for questions) “You have to take questions.” Then when the speech was over and he began dealing with Munro’s question, Munro interrupted him three more times. I know that’s what I do when I have questions for someone: stop them from talking and then stop them from answering. And when I interrupt people by accident I always make sure to yell some extra stuff and not apologize for my “mistake.”
It is totally unprofessional of that reporter. I think they all know the protocol.
Since Obama is black, there is no way to know if any disrespect is related to that or to other facts of his presidency. He has not been disrespected nearly as much as other clearly white presidents such as Reagan and Kennedy, so I would have to guess no.
Note: During SPEECHES, not during press conferences. So that tired Sam Donaldson trope that was being trotted out by the right yesterday isn’t relevant.
For the curious, our good friend over at Talking Points Memo have offered a transcript of the kerfluffle. Rather tame stuff, but centered around the Dream Act Lite the Preznit was offering, asking why the President was favoring foreigners over Americans.
Fun fact, as yet unconfirmed, has it that Mr Munro is an Irish citizen, here on a green card working permit.
Of course not. But we’ve seen conservative nitwits and operatives do this a lot of times before: do something deliberately stupid, then say it’s comparable to some other thing somebody else did, and when they’re forced to respond, flee and act like you’ve won. It’s pretty much what a squid does when it squirts an ink cloud. The point is not to win a debate on merit, it’s to create confusion to stop people from calling them on their actions. No reporter would defend this (Carlson is not a reporter); Chris Wallace and many others have said this is beyond the pale. But for the next day or two we’ll have to listen to people playing stupid until this goes away. Meanwhile Munro’s actions do fit into the broader conservative strategy of trying to win this election through dickhead behavior. If a reporter ever interrupts Romney during a speech, the howling and crying will deafen us all. It’s never going to happen, incidentally: Romney wouldn’t appear before the press if you put a gun to his head and he keeps reporters away from campaign events whenever possible. But if a guy shouts at Obama in the middle of a speech, hey, the president had better answer. That guy’s just doing his job.
