Baby Seal Clubbing Used To Be An Honorable Profession
What a difference twenty years make.
Back in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan was President, he was constantly besieged by hecklers, but knew that the best way to disarm a heckler was to give as good as he got.
June 1982 at the Bundestag, then in Bonn:
Without a strengthened Atlantic security, the possibility of military coercion will be very great. We must continue to improve our defenses if we're to preserve peace and freedom. This is -- -- [Referring to the hecklers, one of whom at this point shouted a reference to El Salvador:] Is there an echo in here? [Laughter and applause]
April 1984 at a Falwell convention:
During the President's remarks, a small group led a brief pre-planned demonstration, with chants and banners, "Bread Not Bombs." The video clip is unedited, and includes this demonstration. It is a poignant reminder of President Reagan at the height of his strength, as he handles the hecklers with dignity and power, and reminds us all of his respect for the courage of our military personnel. "Wouldn't it be nice," he said, "if a little bit of that Marine spirit would rub off, and they would listen about brotherly love?"
November 1984 in Boston (what's wrong with recycling a line?):
Now, I come before you today as a candidate -- --
[At this point, the President was briefly interrupted by hecklers in the audience.]
There's an echo in here, isn't there? [Applause]
Audience. 4 more years! 4 more years! 4 more years!
The President. Thank you. All right. And it's fitting -- --
Audience. 50 States! 50 States! 50 States!
The President. Good enough. I'm with you. All right.
But it seems that the neo-conservatives don't enjoy the give and take as much as the conservatives. This just in:
It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution.
"This is an important time," Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. "The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you."
Barber said the president was interested in three topics: the overall security situation in Iraq, security preparations for the weekend vote and efforts to train Iraqi troops.
As she spoke in Washington, a live shot of 10 soldiers from the Army's 42nd Infantry Division and one Iraqi soldier was beamed into the Eisenhower Executive Office Building from Tikrit — the birthplace of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
"I'm going to ask somebody to grab those two water bottles against the wall and move them out of the camera shot for me," Barber said.
A brief rehearsal ensued.
"OK, so let's just walk through this," Barber said. "Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?"
"Captain Smith," Kennedy said.
"Captain. Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?" she asked.
"Captain Kennedy," the soldier replied.
And so it went.
"If the question comes up about partnering — how often do we train with the Iraqi military — who does he go to?" Barber asked.
"That's going to go to Captain Pratt," one of the soldiers said.
"And then if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit — the hometown — and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?" she asked....
White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Thursday's event was coordinated with the Defense Department but that the troops were expressing their own thoughts. With satellite feeds, coordination often is needed to overcome technological challenges, such as delays, he said.
"I think all they were doing was talking to the troops and letting them know what to expect," he said, adding that the president wanted to talk with troops on the ground who have firsthand knowledge about the situation....
Paul Rieckhoff, director of the New York-based Operation Truth, an advocacy group for U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, denounced the event as a "carefully scripted publicity stunt." Five of the 10 U.S. troops involved were officers, he said.
"If he wants the real opinions of the troops, he can't do it in a nationally televised teleconference," Rieckhoff said. "He needs to be talking to the boots on the ground and that's not a bunch of captains."
Now of course, some will argue that Bush has to limit his access to hostile crowds because of "homeland security." (Kinda like how we can't deal with the illegal aliens because of "homeland security," and how we can't be prepared for natural disasters at the Federal level because of "homeland security.") However, perhaps it's good to remember that all of Reagan's appearances above were made after an assassination attempt on his life. I don't believe that this rises to the level of Nixonian isolation, but these staged events are troublesome.
However, the Baby Seal Clubbers aren't the only ones to stage things - the Communists have done so, also:
When Bill Clinton decided to go to Akron, Ohio, for a "Town Hall" meeting about racial issue on December 3rd [1997], the state Libertarians decided to greet him with a few facts the President would rather forget....
And when Clinton held his televised meeting -- with a carefully hand-picked audience -- Libertarians were waiting outside to protest, and to point out to the media that Clinton's so-called racial dialogue was a "well-choreographed decoy."...
"The coverage of the event, typically, centered around breathless coverage of President Clinton and his staged event."...
"Instead of working to end racism, Clinton and his administration, through their orchestrated national town meetings, will only further divide this nation on racial grounds, " said Babka.
As evidence, Babka pointed out numerous racially divisive government policies, including the fact that Census forms require Americans to declare their race. "This reeks of the apartheid practices that South Africa was infamous for," he said....
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