Tue, March 25, 2003

It's not always easy, but I think it's important to try whenever possible to avoid personal attacks in political debate. (It's a different story when criticizing the work of that shrewish harpy Julianne Moore, because showbiz is so frivolous.) Clearly, if you're trying to elucidate an important point about someone's policies, it dilutes the integrity of your argument if you call him mean names. However, sometimes it's necessary to make an exception.

Ari Fleischer is a cocksucker. A hateful, smug prick. A douche bag. Ordinarily, it's also my intent that the writing on this site is the sort of thing you could read to your grandmother. (Or mine.) But, this guy is such a fucking asshole... there's just no other way to say it. What a cocksucker. (Not literally, of course. I would never speak ill of dude-on-dude fellatio if that happens to be the way your gate swings.)

It doesn't help that President Bush is a less than stellar public speaker. As a result of this, the president has resorted to a two-pronged approach to get through whatever time he spends in front of a microphone: a) stay on-message, meaning on-script, don't deviate from the phonetically-memorized lines; b) "keep it simple." The first part makes him seem evasive because if you ask a question he'll just repeat something he already said. And "keep it simple" has been carried well beyond its logical extreme. They started by using easy words and old-fashioned aphorisms, but even that proved too difficult. So, the language became so "simple" that the only way for him to deliver it was to sound like he was explaining to the slave girl why she can't put kittycat in the oven. He rests one elbow on the lectern in a folksy way, and leans in condescendingly as if to say "why oh why do I have to explain it to you people again?"

So, you're off to a bad start in the smug, condescending, and coy department. This is when you need the aw-shucks humility of Joe Lockhart or the yummy-yum sass of Dee Dee Myers as your Press Secretary. It's important to have someone informed and engaging and trustworthy to build a bridge between the administration and the media since the president can't. It would be a mistake to have, say, a weaselly punk who's even more evasive and not just condescending but downright mean.

Hey, it's no judgment of Bush as a person that he can't speak extemporaneously and sound informed and intelligent. (It doesn't speak for his presidential viability, but then neither does the popular vote.) Everyone who works with him says that he's extremely bright and well-spoken off-camera. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that, but if he's such a great mind shouldn't he know enough to a) remove himself from the spokesman role as often as possible; and b) get a spokesman who can make up for his own shortcomings?

The problem with Fleischer is not that he's firm. That comes with the job. And it's not that he dodges the occasional question. There are issues of national security at stake sometimes. It's his smug tone, the way he answers everything with such transparent contempt in his voice and the condescending manner in which he responds to each question. Add that to the fact that he dodges more than he answers and it makes for a very bad Press Secretary indeed. Cocksucker bad.

And he does that thing with his eyebrows. They're always up as though he's intoning to Little Timmy "Didn't I tell you you'd skin your knee if you rode your tricycle off the balcony? Just like the last five times?"

The Bush administration is not friendly to dissenters. If you don't agree with them, be you a protester in San Francisco or a Democrat in Congress or even the U.N., they'd rather just ignore you or repeat what they already said. If you brought facts with you, the reception is even colder. But it seems like it would be in their best interest to have a fuzzy relationship with the news media. In fact, if you believe what Alexandra Pelosi's Journeys with George has to say, such a chummy approach got them elected. It makes sense to keep the press happy, whether you like them or not, so they'll make you look good. Maybe it's the 9/11 popularity ratings or the smokescreen of the Iraq war, but Fleischer really doesn't seem to care.

He has infuriated me for some time, as I've watched the on-message strategy get fiercer and the "keep it simple" get simpler, and of course he only gets more hostile and confrontational. He makes glib comments like "a national gun registration database wouldn't do any good. People will find a way to modify their gun barrels," only to have to recant that a few days later and announce a "commissioned report" on the viability of such a system. (By the way, I'm paraphrasing him of course.) I still rememember the exchange (one of many over the predicted cost of the war in Iraq, about which the administration has maintained stalwart silence, right up until the additional $75B Bush asked for today) in which Fleischer posited that "the cost could be the cost of a single bullet if someone in Iraq makes that choice." An incredulous reporter asked "Is the White House suggesting to the Iraqi people that they assassinate Saddam Hussein?" At that point, Fleischer would only reply "The goal of this administration is regime change in Iraq," no matter what he was asked.

So, it just surprises me that the administration doesn't see any need for improvement in the Press Secretary area. But they're getting decent polling numbers (as Rich Hall says, "popularity among people who, when approached at the mall by a stranger with a clipboard, aren't smart enough to steer away"), so I guess they'll stick with what works. I just made the choice to watch as little TV news as possible so I didn't have to see him.

Well, then came the war. Now, there's even more news than ever before, and I'm trapped. So, I'm listening to some sort of CNN simulcast on NPR this morning and Fleischer's talking to the press about Russian GPS-jamming technology that's found its way into the hands of the Iraqi army. (By the way, they're not expected to defend themselves? Their army's smaller than ours by an order of magnitude and they don't have Keyhole satellites or laser-guided bombs – or even, according to the U.N., weapons of mass destruction – so, if the Iraqis can carve out a tiny advantage against such techno-warriors, why shouldn't they?) Nobody was even saying it was Fleischer's fault but he was on the defensive because he just always is.

On Boomtown last week, they were interviewing police officers trying to find a suspected rat on the force, and the rat guy got all angry and loud when they asked him questions. It seemed dumb to me, because if you get belligerent and defensive, doesn't it just make it look more like you have something to hide? Well, evidently not to Ari.

Another reporter, seemingly just interested in reporting things that have happened, asked Fleischer why Alan Greenspan had been at the White House so much lately. Pretty simple question – Greenspan's been there three times in two days, which is more than usual. The answer could absolutely be: "Well just coincidence. He has meetings here from time to time, and they happened to fall close together." I would certainly have believed it. But was Fleischer's response so reasonable and measured? Ha ha! He said, "I don't read the notes of every meeting in the White House. If I did, we'd never answer any questions." Ignoring for a moment the fact that he never does answer any questions, why did he have to get so bitchy? The reporter, logically, assumed that if there were anything important going on with Greenspan, the White House Press Secretary might at least know why, even if he hadn't memorized the transcript. He asked a question to that effect, and Fleischer continued to berate him. For me, it was the last straw. A question that could easily have been brushed aside and never thought of again actually became an issue because Fleischer couldn't resist the opportunity to be a sniping little crapweasel.

What a cocksucker.

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