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http://snipurl.com/f8cd You Can't Make This Stuff Up ... The press turnout for a May 23 Q&A with President Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai was poor, but administration imagemakers came up with a novel response. They backed the room with interns posing as reporters. "That way it wouldn't look bad for the cameras," a White House insider told John McCaslin for his "Inside the Beltway" column in the May 24 Washington Times. "A member of the press corps we spoke to yesterday equated reporters at such staged White House functions with 'props,'" McCaslin wrote. One reporter told McCaslin: "Since we can't ask questions, why schlep over there?" The way McCaslin describes it, the result was a little ridiculous. "(Y)ou had all these fresh young faces -- pretty blonde girls, and guys who haven't shaved -- nodding their approval as the president speaks." *** http://snipurl.com/f8cf Freedom's just another word for dodging tough questions May 27, 2005 BY DEBRA PICKETT SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST The news from Washington is like a bad Broadway show, the kind that promises to make you laugh and cry and be better than "Cats." The comedy came first. On Monday, President Bush stood beside Afghan President Hamid Karzai for a "Joint Press Availability." Asked if the Iraqi insurgency was getting more difficult to defeat militarily, Bush answered with a classic Dubya-ism. "No, I don't think so," he said, "I think they're being defeated. And that's why they continue to fight." It's the sort of answer that makes you pause and scratch your head for just long enough to give him a chance to change the subject. He's quite masterful at doing this, which made me wonder if he hadn't taken Karzai aside before the press conference and whispered in his ear, "Listen, Hammie, these reporters are tricky. You better let me handle 'em. I've got 'em wrapped around my finger with this whole newspeak war-is-peace idea Karl found in some book from the 1980s." But Bush's Orwellian logic -- good for only a cynical chuckle -- was definitely not the comic high point of the afternoon. Instead, for sheer free press-thwarting brilliance, Karzai easily won the day. After the two men made some opening remarks, talking about the glories of bringing democracy to Afghanistan, Bush announced, "And in the spirit of the free press, we'll answer a couple of questions." Afghanistan's 'free' press The first question dealt with the military's treatment of Afghan prisoners of war. It was full of facts and details and built-in follow-ups, so you could tell the reporter asking it would probably never get called on again. And, after this rocky start, Bush decided to let the American reporters cool their heels for a while. "Somebody from the Afghan press?" he asked next. There was an awkward silence, which Karzai gamely tried to fill in by asking, "Anybody from the Afghan press? Do we have an Afghan press?" Then he spotted the single reporter his government had permitted to travel outside Afghanistan. "Oh, here he is," Karzai said, as the room filled with the not-quite-warm laughter of people who suspect they might actually be the butt of a joke but aren't sure. It turned out, National Public Radio journalist David Greene reported later, there were nine other Afghan reporters who were to have followed Karzai on his U.S. visit but, at the last minute, the Karzai government decided to withhold their travel permits for fear the journalists might try to escape their troubled homeland. Bush seemed genuinely surprised that the Afghan reporters weren't there -- American journalists had been asked to fill in their empty seats -- so it seems that Karzai forgot to mention to his good friend that the whole free press thing has a slightly different meaning in the burgeoning democracy that is Afghanistan. I imagine they had a pretty good laugh about that one. And I bet Bush was jealous. _____________________________ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject "subscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. 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