It's times like this that make me wonder whether I inhabit a universe different from that occupied by the MSM. This morning, discussing Pres. Bush's reaction to the flying shoe incident, I wrote:
Short of going full Ninja hero and snatching the shoes in mid-air, it's hard to see how Pres. Bush could have been any cooler in his handling of the Hush Puppy Hurler.
But on MSNBC this afternoon, host Tamron Hall claimed that in discussing the matter with the press, the president looked "unnerved" and embarrassed. Here's a clip of Pres. Bush discussing the incident with ABC's Martha Raddatz just after it happened. Does this look like an "unnerved" man to you?It was the occasion of the landing of Air Force One back in the USA that prompted Hall [whom I normally find among the more congenial MSNBC hosts], to take up the matter with her guests, A.B. Stoddard of The Hill and Anne Kornblut of WaPo.
Stoddard, who came in for some attention here for her odd claim last week that death threats were preventing Rahm Emanuel from attending Obama press conferences, didn't seem to detect any of that same nervousness on the prez's part. To the contrary.
A.B. STODDARD: I'm glad he had a sense of humor about it, he said "I didn't hear what the guy said but I saw his sole." But as an American, obviously, we don't do this type of thing. It's very unfortunate; I'm glad that it isn't eight years ago and the person, the reporter, that did it is not going to be killed. But no one wants to see the Commander-in-Chief of the United States with a shoe flying across the room that could hit him in the face?
"No one" wants to see that? A.B.: you callin' all those folks at Daily Kos and HuffPo nobodies?
TAMRON HALL: Anne, what do you think?
ANNE KORNBLUT: Well I think it certainly distracts attention away from what he hoped the legacy tour would be. You know, this was not what he intended. This was the front-page headline today. So for him, it's sort of ending what has been a really hard travail for him on something of a sour note.
TAMRON HALL: And the embarrassment level. I know that a lot of people said that [Iraqi PM] Nuria al Maliki, this is his guest and he would be embarrassed by it. But the president—you can laugh something off, but you can't always hide your feelings. And when you look in his eyes there, when he was talking to reporters, he looked unnerved. And maybe even embarrassed.
So what do you say? Was Hall wrong, or do I need to hail the next starship back to the Milky Way?
