Here’s a shocking statement about the behavior of the White House Press Corps at the Correspondent’s Dinner: “What I saw the other night was like a bunch of teenage girls waiting for a Bay City Rollers concert, ready to scream at their the top of their lungs.”
The content of this statement is not nearly so shocking, however, as who said it – a member of the media, one Joe Scarborough of MSNBC. That’s right, a member of the media is actually talking about media bias. And even more bewildering, he wasn’t the only one. Mika Brzezinski, co-host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, agreed:
BRZEZINSKI: I definitely agree with you, I saw that there, Joe, and even the people running the behind the scenes trying to figure out what shots to put on the air, were like, ooh look at Michelle Obama, she looks so good. Go to him, go to him! What? [...] They were in love. It was weird.
A BBC America guest, Katty Kay, also concurred:
SCARBOROUGH: Katty, I am not faulting Barack Obama for inspiring. I'm faulting a press corps, not for being inspired, but for just, again, being in love. It was a rapturous response.
KAY: It was a rapturous response – At these events there's always a decision that you make and cheer and laugh at the President. People did at Bush, too. All those reporters and press that, perhaps, didn't perhaps vote for President Bush.
SCARBOROUGH: [laughing] Perhaps!
Willie Geist, however, brought the fun to an end with an honest question. Geist, who is not particularly known for his deadpan, asked the following question on the audience demographic:
WILLIE GEIST: Is it all – this is a serious question. Is it all press in the room? Because I was watching from home, and I heard whoops and screams, the likes of which I haven't heard from adults – ever. My question is, were there children in there? Were there teenagers? I'm serious. Because I have never heard grownups screaming like that.
A quick recap, then: The White House Press corps are screaming, adolescent girls waiting outside an amphitheater for their favorite boy band – who less than six months ago, professed undying disdain for a different boy band whose songs contained much of the same lyrics.
Scarborough is, of course, one of MSNBC’s token conservatives, such as he is. But only one of his guests had any disagreement with him, and it was muted at best. The transcript of this exchange can be found below.
JOE SCARBOROUGH: Very funny. I will say, though, as a conservative that has sat through probably seven of the eight Bush events, where people were snarling in the audience, this is wrong, it is wrong for us to sit and laugh with the man that we are supposed to cover, remember "The New York Times" stormed out and said they were never coming back, it was seriously, it was hero worship. What I saw the other night was like a bunch of teenage girls waiting for a Bay City Rollers concert, ready to scream at their the top of their lungs. – Seriously, I –
KATTY KAY: What I love is that you remember the Bay City Rollers.
SCARBOROUGH: I do.
PAT BUCHANAN: But he was playing on home court.
SCARBOROUGH: Yeah.
KAY: But he said that at the beginning. And you all voted for me. Except I was watching Donald Rumsfeld, he was a couple of tables over from me; he laughed at the beginning and as soon as they got to torture and criticizing Cheney, stopped. He was poker faced.
BUCHANAN: Cheney was just a one-liner, thought it was pretty funny. What did he say, how to shoot people and interrogate – how to shoot friends and –
SCARBOROUGH: I actually thought the funniest line she had, it wasn't a nice line, but about Dick Cheney, if your child has an opportunity to get in the car with a stranger or Dick Cheney, take the stranger. However, is the President, Katty, going to get in trouble for laughing at the line about Rush Limbaugh, her hoping that his kidneys fail? That certainly was over the line.
KAY: Yeah. I was watching. That moment I stood up to see whether the President was actually laughing. I had somebody's big head in front of me.
BUCHANAN: Drudge has it on there and the President initially laughs and smiles, even at the kidney thing, but then you see the face going serious, looking down. And you know what's going through this mind, oh, no. This thing is going to come back.
KAY: Right, and you can see, this is going to be Gibbs' topic today.
BUCHANAN: First one out of the box.
KAY: This is going to be Gibbs' baby.
BUCHANAN: The President wishes Rush Limbaugh is dead?
SCARBOROUGH: Mika, I e-mailed Robert yesterday to ask for a response to that. I haven't gotten one yet. But I suspect he's going to have other people asking that question today, right?
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Yeah. I mean, you know, I have to agree with the group on this, just because I think, you know, giving anybody that shrill and loud on either side, that much attention, even if it's a joke and even if it's a bad joke, is just not a good idea.
DONNY DEUTSCH: Joe, to come after Obama, you know, laughing sometimes is just a very gut reaction and I think he laughed and then paused and thought better of it. So jokes even if they're in bad taste can be funny sometimes, even if they go over the line. I think we need to cut the President a break on this one.
SCARBOROUGH: What if George W. Bush had laughed at joke by a conservative comedian wishing death on Al Gore?
DEUTSCH: You’re right, but let’s get to the point – we have a President that we know the press loves. Things slide off of him just like they did Reagan. Of course, from here on in we’re going to be making these analogies, well what if Bush did that. We know these are two different men with completely different grading systems.
SCARBOROUGH: Well yeah, exactly. The bigger issue is again, you had so many – I could not go to an event where if anybody laughed, there wouldn't be people at my table or next table aghast. We are at war and yet people are laughing and oh this is horrible and this is – no, we don't need a night off and they were just – they were so, just so angered that everybody was laughing along. But again, the other night, I saw an entire audience in love with a man they were covering. And when I say in love, I mean deep abiding, obsessed-fed, love.
DEUTSCH: So great. That's the way he deflected. The first thing he came out and said, he said you all voted for me. He's so on tone that he so gets that.
BRZEZINSKI: It's also not his fault.
DEUTSCH: No.
BRZEZINSKI: It is definitely the fault of some members of the media. I definitely agree with you, I saw that there, Joe, and even the people running the behind the scenes trying to figure out what shots to put on the air, were like, ooh look at Michelle Obama, she looks so good. Go to him, go to him! What?
DEUTSCH: We fault him for that –
BRZEZINSKI: They were in love. It was weird.
[crosstalk]
BRZEZINSKI: But he doesn't make anybody feel that way.
SCARBOROUGH: Katty, I am not faulting Barack Obama for inspiring. I'm faulting a press corps, not for being inspired, but for just, again, being in love. It was a rapturous response.
KAY: It was a rapturous response – At these events there's always a decision that you make and cheer and laugh at the President. People did at Bush, too. All those reporters and press that, perhaps, didn't perhaps vote for President Bush.
SCARBOROUGH: [laughing] Perhaps!
KAY: And there may have been one or two of them. But they still laughed at him during that event. I was sitting at the table with a bunch of Brits, as I would do, and what struck us was this wouldn't happen in Britain. You wouldn't get the prime minister sitting there and being taken, made fun of, like you had the President sitting there. You couldn't do it. We wouldn't be able to laugh at our prime minister while he was sitting there in that room. That was interesting.
WILLIE GEIST: Is it all – this is a serious question. Is it all press in the room? Because I was watching from home, and I heard whoops and screams, the likes of which I haven't heard from adults ever. My question is, were there children in there? Were there teenagers? I'm serious. Because I never heard grownups screaming like that.
SCARBOROUGH: There were – it was a mix of press and Hollywood and a lot of Hollywood stars were there.
BRZEZINSKI: That's true. There you go.
SCARBOROUGH: They were very, very excited.
BRZEZINSKI: They were very excited.
