"You can't ask questions in here--it's the press room!"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Yes, in response to Obama’s recent irritation at the press, one of Prof. Ann Althouse’s commenters came up with this line. Althouse: "Well, you can see why that would catch him by surprise..."

And in a later post another commenter came up with this related line:

“Dr. Changegov, Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bama” Althouse: You can't ask questions in here! This is the press room!

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA!

If random Internet posters can come up with pure comedy gold like this, the pros can stop worrying they won’t have material. :smiley:

2

If you think this is comedy gold I’d hate to know what you consider a bad joke.

3

This must be a location joke.

And I wasn’t there.

4

I didn’t bother to click on the links as you didn’t give enough information on the contents to justify such an action.

Is this supposed to be a pit thread of some kind?

5

Obama visited the White House Press Room, somebody asked him a substantive question about the lobbying rules and Bill Lynn, and Obama got annoyed and didn’t answer him. That’s undoubtedly what this thread is about. Here’s a link with the story and video clip.

6

Meet-and-greet session hijacked into formal press conference mode; president explains its a meet-and-greet and that the formal press conference was scheduled for later.

Non-story. yawn

7

I guess you guys never saw the movie “Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”. And the best line in the movie (or in any movie, IMHO) is when a fistfight does break out in the War Room, and the President says, “You can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”

Oh well. Your loss.

8

We’ll get over it.

9

The amount of irritation shown by Obama in the Politico clip is somewhat less than the amount of irritation I get when an OP makes a solid reference to Dr. Strangelove, only to find upon investigation that the reference wasn’t apt at all.

10

As an Obama suporter I have to say this could be A Very Bad Sign[sup]TM[/sup]. Or it could be yesterday’s news. I’m hoping it’s a non-story, but only future events will tell. Like regular Obama news conferences where he actually answers questions, even tough ones.

I don’t mind the media growing a pair, I wish they’d done so sooner.

I’d also like to see White House staffers quoted by name in background briefings. There was a quote in today’s Washington Post about Obama’s proposed stimulus package. The quote was entirely laudatory - so why did it have to be from an anonymous “White House” source instead of “John Smith, Assistant to the President for Saying Nice Things About Favored Legislation”? :rolleyes:

Since I knew about the incident (everyone should read Dan Froomkin’s blog on washingtonpost.com), I immediately got the OP’s Dr. Strangelove reference, and I thought it was good. If one had not heard of this particular kerfluffle I can see where the OP would cause a WTF reaction.

11

If a WH rep or the Prez had said, there’s no asking questions, this is the press room, then it would have been hilarious. Not taking questions now, but I am later is not so funny. But I’m glad to see that the press has decided that they will now shout questions to the Prez. I kinda missed an independent press the last eight years.

12

I would wager that the majority of Dopers have seen the film and recognise the quote. The problem here is that taking a classic clever line and substituting two words so that it (kinda-sorta) applies to X situation rarely makes for ‘pure comedy gold’ and certainly hasn’t in this case.

13

In other words, we “got” whatever little there was to “get”.