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Sun 9 Oct, 2005 12:22 pm
The Halls of Power, eh?......
I would LOVE to see GWB on "Questiontime" on the BBC. The audience would rip him apart. They've already done it to Blair, and many other so called "V.I.P's".
But alas, they would never get the opportunity......GWB only likes "safe" interviews.
Well done, Carole.
BBB, while you were posting the second half I tried to find the article. Which Sunday Times was this?
America. It was good while it lasted.
I don't blame this woman at all. I want to slap the **** out of the guy every time I see him.
Remembering watching this on the telly, the most interesting aspect was the really shocked look on Bushs' face when she continued asking him direct questions, like he couldn't believe she had the nerve to ask HIM those questions.
Mommas boy got his fingers singed and ran away sniffling. Too bad the American press corps doesn't act accordingly.
Lol! I suspect it was mutual.
Bush seems utterly unaccustomed to proper, intense questioning (hides from it at home) and I can only imagine he kept his temper with great difficulty. I imagine it exploded afterwards!
There got to be some way we can all work together to get bush slapped. Just once, then let the nukes fly. Think man, think.
He has that effect on people. He reminds me of the little snot in the neighborhood who starts trouble and when confronted runs home to momma to hide behind her skirt.
Many of Bush's old boys are really not-so-old girls
By KENNETH R. BAZINET
and THOMAS M. DeFRANK
DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Quote:WASHINGTON - Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination shocked political and legal circles, but not veteran Bush-watchers: President Bush may be a charter member of the old-boy network, but he's always surrounded himself with women.Bush's inner circle arguably includes more females than any other President, many of whom have longstanding professional relationships with him dating back to his days as Texas governor.
Besides Miers, his former personal lawyer and staff secretary, Bush's distaff corps includes two cabinet officers - Secretary of State Rice and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes, handed the herculean task of selling American values to the world, is Bush's most trusted political confidant.
Moreover, nearly half of Bush staffers with the coveted "assistant to the President" title are women, including the homeland security, legislative liaison and personnel chiefs.
Friends say Bush's penchant for appointing assertive, overachieving women to his personal staff was nurtured at home, where former First Lady Barbara Bush, the tough-as-nails matriarch of the Bush clan, was the family enforcer when the future President was growing up.
A former top staffer adds: "He likes punching that [diversity] ticket because it insulates him from white-boy criticism."
There's another common thread to All the President's Women: total fealty to the boss.
"They are all extremely loyal and subordinate their own ambitions to him," an ex-Bush staffer observed.
All the President’s women
I wonder if he played with dolls and wore a skirt as a youngster. And for that matter if he still does.
Ha! Great stuff, great anecdotes, great insight into how it all went (and goes).
As for the meat of it: "I felt that I had simply done my job" - well, of course! And her example shamed others who do not do their job properly, whether out of deference or loyalty or fear of the kind of retaliation she did indeed get to face.
And yes, of course "it's the journalist's job to lead the interview". It's not the job of a journalist - a fact-finder, not a mere transmitter of opinion - to defer to the president and "let him lead the interview".
I don't know whether the president's aides' apparent opposite opinion shows off a cultural divide between Europe and the US, or the particular mindset of this administration, or both, but that would seem obvious to me.
BBB, I would love it if you could share a link... I so want to feature this on our website - though I probably can't, it being too off-topic - but in any case I would only be able to do so with a URL...
I'm confused, as I said, about the timing.
I keep picking up that this happened in 2004 - I don't remember when myself, but it wasn't just recently. I've read much of this before, unless I'm having total deja vu - and think perhaps the post is that she herself wrote the description up for this article.
Yeah of course she wrote it up herself, the journalist, it's her story ... or what do you mean?
And yeah, the interview itself is some time ago, probly a year or so ... so it's a nice revisit to that occasion, now, to hear how it went behind the scenes...
ebeth.......you win again!
and here's why it's being covered right now
...
Quote:BOOK OFFER
This article is extracted from the opening chapter of Alleluia America! by Carole Coleman, to be published by The Liffey Press on October 14 at 14.95.
Alleluia America! is available to readers of The Sunday Times at a 10% discount (plus postage). To order, call xxxxxx or email xxxxxxxxx.
bingo.
All I meant was that I was confused on the timing, re why I was seeing this today -
I agree, I am delighted to revisit, and wish more was learned from that by folks here, in whatever intervening months, by those who do interviews, not that all are poor at it, though it seems so, but in general, in comparison to my earlier years of reading interviews and what I know of what goes on in other countries, I think US reporters have been a combo of sleepy and beholden.
Yes, of course she wrote it up herself, but was that today or last year.... that was not clear to me.
So now I'll look at the link.
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