On last night’s “Countdown,” Keith Olbermann issued a righteous smackdown to President Bush for his response to that planted MoveOn.org question that was the finale of his strange, rambling press conference (when the President started shrieking “Mandela! Mandela!” I thought he’d finally lost it).
Honestly, we all had to know that question was a plant; when has President Bush ever given a response so pointed and articulate to a press conference question? Sadly, he was just reading his lines in another pathetic piece of political theater. Wake up, Sheeple, it's all just smoke and mirrors.
Olbermann wasn't fooled, in fact, he was outraged. Crooks & Liars has the video and transcript, and here are a few choice excerpts:
Deliberately, premeditatedly, and virtually without precedent, you shanghaied a military man as your personal spokesman — and now you’re complaining about the outcome, and then running away from the microphone?
Eleven months ago the President’s own party — the Republican National Committee — introduced this very different kind of advertisement, just nineteen days before the mid-term elections.
Bin Laden.
And Zawahiri’s rumored quote of six years ago about having bought “suitcase bombs.”
All set against a ticking clock, and finally a blinding explosion… and the dire announcement:
“These are the stakes - vote, November 7th.”
Terrorizing your own people in hopes of getting them to vote for your own party has never brought as much as a public comment from you?
The Republican Hamstringing of Captain Max Cleeland and lying about Lieutenant John Kerry met with your approval?
But a shot at General Petraeus — about whom you conveniently ignore it is you who reduced him from four-star hero to a political hack — that merits this pissy juvenile blast at the Democrats on national television?
[. . .]
But Mr. Bush, you have hidden behind the General’s skirts, and today you have hidden behind the skirts of ‘the planted last question’ at a news conference, to indicate once again that your presidency has been about the tilted playing field, about no rules for your party in terms of character assassination and changing the fabric of our nation, and no right for your opponents or critics to as much as respond.
That, sir, is not only un-American — it is dictatorial.
And in pimping General David Petraeus, sir, in violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it.
You did it again today, sir, and you need to know how history will judge the line you just crossed.
Go to C&L and hear the whole thing.
[UPDATE]: ThinkProgress has the goods on the conservative reporter who asked Bush the question.
