Roger Simon has the goods on Deacon from Powerline shelling Senator Durbin. Other bloggers are pointing to a hill staffer's email saying that this was groundbreaking because most journalists are lightweights and constrain themselves so as to not annoy Reps and Senators who can deny them access.

Notice two things in the video:

1. As mentioned elsewhere, the "who are you with" question. I think this was not just a warning but he wanted to know b/c he's now going to do his homework on these guys. It's very likely that he will not answer any questions from anyone from Pajamas Media again.

2. The tone. Senator Durbin takes the tone of someone talking to a child. What he doesn't know is that the man he's talking to is a laywer, and by all accounts, a good one. He cannot simply say something means what he says it means and then move on. He gets solid followup questions not puffy ones that allow him to drone on and on.

The downside of this is that the press is going to close ranks and Congress is going to help them. Day passes for briefings and press conferences are going to be harder and harder to come by. Given that most bloggers are NOT in DC and don't have access to DC, they are going to avoid press conferences and Q&A's outside the Beltway. I would like to see more bloggers putting the pressure on these guys. It would be nice if somebody started asking them hard questions. This goes for the President too. I think it is shameful that he hasn't had a press conference in months. He is not a good speaker and the press is overtly hostile but that doesn't mean he shouldn't be answering questions. Likewise Cheney. Get up there and take your lumps. If you can't handle the wimps in the press corps, you need to rethink your line of work.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

So....the autism thing

For Gerard