Archive for the ‘President-Bush’ Category

President Bush: Not Funny, Not Covered

September 7, 2007

Did you know President Bush spoke to a key economic summit at the Australian Opera House in Sydney yesterday?  Did you know he launched a few of his ?

: “He’d only reached the third sentence of Friday’s speech to business leaders, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, when he committed his first gaffe.

“Thank you for being such a fine host for the OPEC summit,” Bush said to Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

Oops. That would be APEC, the annual meeting of leaders from 21 Pacific Rim nations, not OPEC, the cartel of 12 major oil producers.

Bush quickly corrected himself. “APEC summit,” he said forcefully, joking that Howard had invited him to the OPEC summit next year (for the record, an impossibility, since neither Australia nor the U.S. are OPEC members).

The president’s next goof went uncorrected — by him anyway. Talking about Howard’s visit to Iraq last year to thank his country’s soldiers serving there, Bush called them “Austrian troops.”

You wouldn’t have learned this from CNN.COM, FOXNEWS.COM, or MSNBC.COM,  who are mostly concerned with the mother of a British 3-year old questioned in the girl’s disappearance,  an upcoming ’happy anniversary of September 11′ message from a newly-dyed (and undead) Osama Bin Ladin (hat tip to Andrew Sullivan), and nude pictures of someone named Vanessa Hudgins from High School Musical appearing on the Web.  (To their credit, ABCNEWS did run something on Bush’s confrontation with a Korean leader.)

Bush fatigue is palpable–but our media is doing a pathetic job of covering the President of the United States.

Posted in ABC-News, Andrew-Sullivan, CNN, Fox-News, MSNBC, President-Bush | No Comments »

Sad, Scary and Possibly True

June 29, 2007

The immigration bill has gone down to defeat in the Senate.  Whatever one’s political beliefs, it was clearly a major defeat for President Bush, who used much of his diminished political capital to try to get it passed, but in the end won only 12 Republican senators to his side.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) came under enormous pressure from conservative constituents who railed against the measure’s path toward citizenship (”amnesty“) for illegal immigrants.
    
What he said was sad, scary, and possibly true.  ”I’ve learned one main lesson,” he said. “A lot of Americans have lost faith in their government – they don’t think we can control our borders, win a war, issue passports.”

From a media perspective, to be successful the candidates of both parties will have to sell against that with all their optimism, energy, and enthusiasm.

Posted in Politics, President-Bush, immigration, public-relations-disaster | 1 Comment »

Lou Dobbs Rips President Bush

June 13, 2007

CNN “journalist” Lou Dobbs attacked President Bush today on CNN.com for the immigration bill the President supports.  Money quote:

President Bush is building his legacy, adding another unfortunate line of hollow bravado to his rhetorical repertoire. To “Mission accomplished,” “Bring it on,” “Wanted: Dead or alive,” and of course, “I earned … political capital, and now I intend to spend it,” he has added “I’ll see you at the bill signing,” referring to his own ill-considered push for so-called comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

I’m no Bush fan, but I’m troubled when a network’s leading anchor foregoes journalistic objectivity to blast a President, particularly when that President is trying to address the immigration issue with a bipartisan solution.   A current poll reveals that ”a strong majroity of Americans-including two-thirds of Republicans- favor allowing illegal immigrants to become citizens to become citizens if they pay fines, learn English and meet other requirements.”

That doesn’t stop Dobbs from dancing on the edge of paranoia, xenophobia, and yes, racism, once again.

In what other country would citizens be treated to the spectacle of the president and the Senate focusing on the desires of 12 million to 20 million people who had crossed the nation’s borders illegally, committed document fraud, and in many cases identity theft, overstayed their visas and demanded, not asked, full forgiveness for their trespasses?

Illegal aliens and their advocates, both liberal and conservative, possess such an overwhelming sense of entitlement that they demand not only legal status, but also that the government leave the borders wide open so that other illegals could follow as well…

Does this help CNN maintain its hard-won reputation for integrity and credibility? And is a ranting Lou Dobbs the face of TimeWarner that CEO Richard Parsons want to show?

Posted in Los-Angeles-Times, Lou-dobbs, President-Bush, Richard-Parsons, Time-Warner, Time-Warner-CEO-Richard-Parsons, public-relations-disaster | 1 Comment »