White House On Broken C-Span Promise: 'Forget About It!' :: Political News and commentaries

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January 7, 2010

White House On Broken C-Span Promise: 'Forget About It!'

Byron York writes at The Examiner:

On Tuesday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs declined to answer questions about the president's campaign commitment to hold health-care negotiations on C-Span. Gibbs said he had not seen a letter from C-Span's Brian Lamb to congressional leaders requesting the coverage and thus could not comment on it.

On Wednesday, Gibbs was asked again about the C-Span commitment. The story had gotten pretty big in the intervening time, and presumably Gibbs had had a chance to familiarize himself with it. So reporters tried for a second day to get him to comment on the president's commitment to holding televised health-care talks. Gibbs' answer? "We covered this yesterday." Gibbs referred reporters to the transcript of Tuesday's briefing and said, "The answer I would give today is similar."

But of course, he hadn't answered the question at all.

(see transcript at link)

The WH's reaction to the press' questions reminds me of the scene from Donnie Brasco where Johnny Depp explains what "forget about it" means:

In other words, the American people are being told "Go to Hell, we ain't talking about it."

As The Patriot Room frames it:

Defending a bald-faced lie is tough, but we learn from Bobby Gibbs how to do it. Don't answer the question and then when you are asked a follow-up question, refer to your first answer.

Which is, of course, the equivalent of saying "forget about it"!

Meanwhile, Democrat after Democrat dutifully defends (with a straight face, mind you) the administration's abject failure of transparency - before the cameras, and laughably claims the whole process has been the most transparent in history, as though the entire population of America is comprised of idiots, too dumb to have seen the entire process of both Reidcare and Pelosicare compiled in secret behind closed doors.

However, the Dems' denials about the lack of transparency are clearly part of a pattern. They actually believe that if you tell a lie loud enough and often enough, it will eventually be believed, regardless of facts to the contrary. Facts like C-Span's CEO totally refuting the Dems's claim about transparency and C-span coverage of the secret process of putting the health care bill together, and that C-Span had been allowed to cover only 1 hour of the health care issue, and that was of a staged event by the WH:

Posted by Abdul at January 7, 2010 9:52 AM

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