Helen Thomas and Chip Reid call out Press Sec. Gibbs

[Hayabusa Rider]

WFT?

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

So Obama will have his questions asked by people in a format that appears to be a session where the public is free to ask what they will.

Nope. People won't be allowed to ask what they want. They'll have questions handed to them to act so the entire UHC "discussion" is scripted.

Now that's openness for you.

If anyone thinks that Helen Thomas is a Right Wing Republican, they don't have their head screwed on. Gibbs' obfuscation is almost comical except the majority of Americans won't have a clue of how this will be micromanaged.

I'm becoming less satisfied with this Administration every day. I was hoping for change, but instead we have a new flavor of controlling the people.

 

[Billyzeke]

I think my head just exploded!
I found myself in agreement with who? Helen Thomas?
WTH is going on here!


Bend over! Here comes the change!

 

[Corn]

Here comes the crikets............

 

[masteryoda34]

Originally posted by: Billyzeke
I think my head just exploded!
I found myself in agreement with who? Helen Thomas?
WTH is going on here!

Agreed.

 

[Kirby]

What pisses me off is the smug prick is giggling about it. :roll:

 

[her209]

1. People submit questions via Twitter/Facebook.
2. Questions will be selected from the list of submitted questions.
3. Asker of said question will be called on during town hall meeting.

Is that what is going on?

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: her209
1. People submit questions via Twitter/Facebook.
2. Questions will be selected from the list of submitted questions.
3. Asker of said question will be called on during town hall meeting.

Is that what is going on?

Yes, that's precisely it. The WH will determine from the universe of questions what they want to be asked. The public has absolutely no input as to what's asked.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider
WFT?

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

So Obama will have his questions asked by people in a format that appears to be a session where the public is free to ask what they will.

Nope. People won't be allowed to ask what they want. They'll have questions handed to them to act so the entire UHC "discussion" is scripted.

Now that's openness for you.

If anyone thinks that Helen Thomas is a Right Wing Republican, they don't have their head screwed on. Gibbs' obfuscation is almost comical except the majority of Americans won't have a clue of how this will be micromanaged.

I'm becoming less satisfied with this Administration every day. I was hoping for change, but instead we have a new flavor of controlling the people.

Man, that press secretary comes across about as weaselly as the Bush ones. The phony giggling, evasion, and sarcasm.

I don't have the facts quite clear from the clip - it sounds like they are inviting the public to submit questions and they'll select from those.

That's somewhere between the 'pure' town hall where anyone can come and ask anything they want without it being submitted or approved in advace, and phone town halls where the attendees are carefull selected to play the role the President wants and handed questions they want asked that the staff wrote.

It actually makes some sense - it does have the 'legitimacy' of the town hall input in the questions coming from the public, if the selection process picks the right questions; and there's an efficiency, in that a real town hall, with the valuable time of the President and a national audience likely getting wasted by yahoos like Joe the Plumber asking useless questions. Even real town halls have to deal with that problem.

We don't really need a 'real town hall' with the President in my opinion, we just need good information, and a good press corps asking good questions, which we often don't have.

A town hall seems mostly something people want when they're not getting those things, as a more direct route.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider

Originally posted by: her209
1. People submit questions via Twitter/Facebook.
2. Questions will be selected from the list of submitted questions.
3. Asker of said question will be called on during town hall meeting.

Is that what is going on?

Yes, that's precisely it. The WH will determine from the universe of questions what they want to be asked. The public has absolutely no input as to what's asked.

You're overstating it. If you tell your wife to give you a list of three choices for a gift she wants and you promise to buy one of the three, did she have "absolutely no input"?

 

[nageov3t]

We don't really need a 'real town hall' with the President in my opinion, we just need good information

so why bother with the facade if all the Obama administration wants to do is release a press release?

 

[lupi]

never saw this coming

 

[sciwizam]

Originally posted by: Craig234

A town hall seems mostly something the administration wants when it needs to release no specifics and somehow come across as if given a great speech about the issue.

Fixed

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: sciwizam

Originally posted by: Craig234

A town hall seems mostly something the administration wants when it needs to release no specifics and somehow come across as if given a great speech about the issue.

Fixed

Actually, I had meant to add after saying why the people want one, that the administration wants a town hall when it's trying to 'sell' a message a certain way.

But not all admiinstrations are equally respectful of 'the public'. Some would have a more sincere interest in the public's view than others.

None have a lot of time for the idiots in the public, though, wasting time at a nationally televised event (unless they're Joe The Plumber or Sarah Palin, I guess I'm wrong...)

 

[Double Trouble]

Meet the new slime, same as the old slime. I always knew Obama was a liberal, but (perhaps naively) I was hoping he would bring some real change to DC. It's becoming more clear by the day that the only change coming is that the BS comes flowing from the left instead of the right.

If they don't want to answer questions on the fly for whatever reasons, fine, just be honest about it. Lying and pretending that it's a "town hall" when in fact it's just a prepared speech is typical political slime. Obama is showing himself to be typical political slime.

 

[yllus]

I think it's reasonable to do a certain amount of filtering for what questions are asked - to eliminate repetition, badly phrased and, let's face it, sheer stupidity/wastefulness of time. However, that's probably a very optimistic view of why filtering/pre-selection would occur.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: Craig234

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider

Originally posted by: her209
1. People submit questions via Twitter/Facebook.
2. Questions will be selected from the list of submitted questions.
3. Asker of said question will be called on during town hall meeting.

Is that what is going on?

Yes, that's precisely it. The WH will determine from the universe of questions what they want to be asked. The public has absolutely no input as to what's asked.

You're overstating it. If you tell your wife to give you a list of three choices for a gift she wants and you promise to buy one of the three, did she have "absolutely no input"?

If the Bush administration had done this for Iraq, you could have seen "President Bush, we know Saddam has WMDs and wants to attack us" or "The people are greatly concerned about Saddam. When are you going to war as the people wish".

There will be thousands of questions, not three. When an Administration get's to give itself control of what's asked, they will take advantage of it.

You think Thomas has become a right wingnut?

You're protecting Obama when you should be drubbing him for manipulating the whole thing.

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

The outrage here is weak, let's hit the brakes for a second, folks. From what I can tell, they are choosing the twitter/facebook questions, not real people.

These are questions coming from twitter and facebook, we all know what a high level of anonymity does to people. Of course questions will have to be selected. They are going to have to filter out weak/illegitamate questions and will probably skip (or even edit - THE HORROR!) over questions that are grammatical nightmares. They will have to look through messages for duplicates to remove (those would be a waste of time) and other things.

 

[Double Trouble]

Originally posted by: Rhonda the Sly
The outrage here is weak, let's hit the brakes for a second, folks. From what I can tell, they are choosing the twitter/facebook questions, not real people.

These are questions coming from twitter and facebook, we all know what a high level of anonymity does to people. Of course questions will have to be selected. They are going to have to filter out weak/illegitamate questions and will probably skip (or even edit - THE HORROR!) over questions that are grammatical nightmares. They will have to look through messages for duplicates to remove (those would be a waste of time) and other things.

Ok, fine, but that still means the administration gets to pick the questions beforehand, and prepare a nice speech answer. If that's what they want to do, fine, but then don't lie to the public and pretend it's a "town hall" forum and "the people" are getting to ask questions. The fact is if they get the questions beforehand and get to edit/pick what they want, then it's no different from a prepared speech -- typical political slime.

 

[Rhonda the Sly]

This is probably why internet submissions aren't usually done, it introduces a level of complexity and illegitimacy that wasn't there before. Of course, not taking these submissions means only people who live in the state of the town hall (or have the luxury of taking time off work in a recession and flying) can participate. Overall, I think taking the submissions, while it has its obvious downsides, does broaden the scope of the conversation. If you want to be able to participate from afar, this is what it takes.

The outrage probably stems from Chip and Helen (especially Helen) not understanding the internet and the Gibb having some knowledge of it because this administration is all over it. This is precisely (I assume) why Gibby is chuckling, he knows that letting anyone and everything through will lead to absolute silliness and they want real questions.

 

[nageov3t]

Of course, not taking these submissions means only people who live in the state of the town hall (or have the luxury of taking time off work in a recession and flying) can participate. Overall, I think taking the submissions, while it has its obvious downsides, does broaden the scope of the conversation. If you want to be able to participate from afar, this is what it takes.

that would be 100% correct... if all questions weren't being filtered through a system that has no interest in legitimately discussing or debating the issue and only wants to sell it.

if they really cared about it, they could have gotten a neutral 3rd party like a local paper or something to set the thing up and have people not directly on Obama's payroll filtering the questions.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: Rhonda the Sly
This is probably why internet submissions aren't usually done, it introduces a level of complexity and illegitimacy that wasn't there before. Of course, not taking these submissions means only people who live in the state of the town hall (or have the luxury of taking time off work in a recession and flying) can participate. Overall, I think taking the submissions, while it has its obvious downsides, does broaden the scope of the conversation. If you want to be able to participate from afar, this is what it takes.

The outrage probably stems from Chip and Helen (especially Helen) not understanding the internet and the Gibb having some knowledge of it because this administration is all over it. This is precisely (I assume) why Gibby is chuckling, he knows that letting anyone and everything through will lead to absolute silliness and they want real questions.

I'm sorry, but that's rather naive. Helen and Chip get it perfectly. Where the universe of questions comes from is unimportant. It's that there will be hundreds or thousands of questions that will be selected to promote the agenda.

Gibbs totally ignores that and goes back repeatedly to saying that people can ask whatever they want, but completely ignores that no one will have any say in what will be selected other than the administration. He pretends he doesn't even get it.

As with my Bush analogy it's entirely possible to go through and pick precisely the questions to make the Iraq War look like the US public not only understands that Saddam wanted to kill us ASAP, but that we overwhelmingly demand we nuke Iraq.

For that matter, I'll violate Godwins law and say that Hitler could have make every nation a supporter of the Holocost given enough questions do draw upon.

It's a propaganda tool, not an honest question and answer session.

 

[dmcowen674]

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider
Topic Title: Helen Thomas and Chip Reid call out Press Sec. Gibbs
Topic Summary: A "public" meeting where people are only allowed to ask approved questions

Awesome

Lying worked for Bush so why not Obama

He has learned well from the Republicans :thumbsup:

Turnabout is fair play

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider
Topic Title: Helen Thomas and Chip Reid call out Press Sec. Gibbs
Topic Summary: A "public" meeting where people are only allowed to ask approved questions

Awesome

Lying worked for Bush so why not Obama

He has learned well from the Republicans :thumbsup:

Turnabout is fair play

That's like saying that if a Rep cut off your left nut, that it's cool if the Dems cut off your right one.

 

[trenchfoot]

It's so amusing that I find myself having to filter out the hidden/not-so-hidden agenda's in this thread whose subject is about filtering what we see and hear for public consumption.

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider

Originally posted by: dmcowen674

Originally posted by: Hayabusa Rider
Topic Title: Helen Thomas and Chip Reid call out Press Sec. Gibbs
Topic Summary: A "public" meeting where people are only allowed to ask approved questions

Awesome

Lying worked for Bush so why not Obama

He has learned well from the Republicans :thumbsup:

Turnabout is fair play

That's like saying that if a Rep cut off your left nut, that it's cool if the Dems cut off your right one.

"Turnabout is fair play", meet "Two wrongs don't make a right."

"They did it" is not in and of itself justification for us to do it.

Sure, it applies to some things. The Republicans' gerrymandering between censuses, for example, seem to me to fit 'turnabout is fair play' - until it's prohibited for both.

"Lying" is not ok.