Robert Gibbs: how to win friends and influence people
The Worst Press Secretary Ever. In a class by himself.
Gibbs has abandoned any pretense of giving out information of any veracity. His performances are entirely composed of equal measure of spin and smirk—almost like an-only-slightly-more-cleaned-up version of bloggers who specialize in juvenile snark.
Why is this man laughing? I haven’t a clue. And if any Obama supporter can explain why someone as wonderful as Obama chose someone as abominable as this man to be his spokesperson to the world, please let me know.
As for Helen Thomas: although I ordinarily find her despicable, and despite the fact that I think in this case her ire was roused by what she considers a paucity of due obeisance to august journalists such as herself by the Obama administration, I can’t help but cheer her on here. She doesn’t take Gibbs’ horse manure for an answer; she just hones in on him with all the outrage her eighty-nine feisty years can muster.
And Gibbs treats her as condescendingly as humanly possible without actually spitting in her eye. But that’s not just because she’s a woman, or even because she’s an elderly woman, or even because she’s the invariably annoying Helen Thomas—it’s because he’s that way to everyone.
[NOTE: Ooops! I just noticed that Gerard Vanderleun said this all first, and better.]
I saw the clip on Dirtyrottenscoundrels, and thought – what an ugly-sounding laughter the man has. Smack-on-the-head annoying.
The indignity of adolescent quarrel, that’s the public tone of this administration. That comes across before actual meaning of what they are saying.
I am not one to recommend Vanity Fair articles for their insight (especially after that hit piece on Sarah Palin), but this article on the Obama press operation was very illuminating. I find Gibbs to be consistently snide and arrogant rather than “courtly,” as the article suggests, but it does seem to pinpoint the press secretary’s M.O. rather well. It’s described as “talking to the dinosaurs.” Here’s an excerpt:
“…It’s not just that he successfully holds the pressroom at bay. It’s that he clearly doesn’t take the press very seriously. Gibbs is perfectly affable and even, in his way, courtly. And yet he seems to be not quite listening. Nothing touches him. This is no doubt partly because everybody understands he’s in like Flynn. Unlike with most press secretaries, where the press has the leverage of often knowing more than the press secretary, who is usually a relatively weak West Wing link, Gibbs really knows all, apparently–he’s as present as anyone in the creation of Obama policy. There is too the Obama 30-point advantage–he’s got America eating out of his hand. Gibbs has, at least so far, an easy product to sell. And then there’s the personal insecurity on the part of members of the incredible shrinking press–their days are numbered and they know it.
All of which might have something to do in the dominance-and-submission equation with why, at the president’s 100-day press conference, there were no questions about the bailouts or Afghanistan, perhaps the two most intractable issues facing the administration. When the other guy is strong and you are weak, you try to behave yourself.
And yet, a funny thing: Gibbs, who surely knows something about the dwindling life of the establishment media, who as Obama’s campaign spokesperson was part of the most sophisticated new-media outreach program in politics, who is, with his own personal access and his boss’s overwhelming popularity, beholden to nobody, nevertheless appears to be playing the press game as straight and as conventionally and, in a sense, as humbly as it’s ever been played. “His M.O.,” says David Corn, a longtime Washington reporter who is a regular at the daily briefing, is “to talk to the dinosaurs.”
Read the whole thing:
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2009/07/wolff200907?printable=true¤tPage=all
Two minds with but a single thought.
For the first few months I thought that Gibbs was another Obama gaffe, like appointing tax cheats to fix the economy.
I assumed that Obama would realize that Gibbs was an embarrassment and replace Gibbs at an opportune moment.
Now I think Gibbs is simply another face of Obama’s not even concealed contempt — like giving Hillary the finger while scratching his nose.
“I won.”
I’ll tell you why Gibbs laughs: he has learned to depend some press room media to be as obsequious as a Jon Stewart audience; to cover for him – with their obsequious laughter – when he is in a tight spot. Pukifying.
In this clip, there were a a couple of moments when Gibbs looked for the protective laughter and it was not there to protect him. It’s the first time I have seen the laughter not be there for him. Could the worm be turning?
America has come to some state when people grasp at such insignificant straws as lack of laughter at a press conference by the state owned media as a sign that somehow the populace is waking for its self induced Obama worship.
My problem: I’m not wise enough to be a pragmatist. I’m a romantic grasper. At insignificant straws. And at, um, other things.
Control of the media is one facet of a left wing socialist state now they have control of the country look forward to this being increased . The fact that the STUPID MSM was up Obambi’s ars* all during the election process will not help them one bit these control freaks need real control not just willful stupidity.
‘gcotharn’ as I believe it you used to be indecisive but now you are not so sure.
Definitely.
If there is one thing that you must not do with the press, it is to treat them like the fools they are. What Helen Thomas is experiencing is nothing like what she deserves, but at some point she will stop shilling for Obama.
This puts me in mind of the scene near the end of Animal Farm wherein the horse who had worked himself to the edge of death is taken away to the butcher in a cart that he is no longer strong enough to escape. The MSM has lost so much credibility swinging wildly at the Right that is may not have anything to use on the Left. And, like Stalin in WWII, the MSM is an ally you would rather not need, but you might need nevertheless.