With a number of special guest stars (five former press secretaries), surprise appearances (President Bush, Laura Bush, and Sam Donaldson) and much playful banter, the White House’s 20th-century relic of a press briefing room took its final curtain call Wednesday, prior to nine months of planned renovations.
The Washington Post‘s Peter Baker had the best take, writing that “After 13,271 days of constant spinning, the broken-down, rat-infested firetrap officially known as the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room was retired yesterday” and that the president “seemed to be smiling a lot as he contemplated life without reporters underfoot.” (Post headline: “Media Pull Out of One Combat Zone.”)
“It’s a beautiful bunch of people,” the president said of the White House press corps, while he, Donaldson, Helen Thomas and Tony Snow cracked jokes. (“You’re a has-been!” Bush said to Donaldson.)
Amid the conviviality, though, some bloggers couldn’t resist the chance to land more blows at the press.
“Even the Bush-bashing New York Times can tell you today: there’s no room for conspiracy theories about the White House sending reporters across the park for press briefings for a few months while they renovate and update the briefing room,” wrote Tim Graham at NewsBusters.
Bush “was at the top of his game,” said Hang Right Politics. “He smiled, laughed, made jokes, and traded barbs with a press corps that largely despise him. That’s odd considering he’s one of the most likeable people I’ve ever seen.”
Hoystory, taking things a bit seriously, took issue with Donaldson’s question of whether Mel Gibson should be forgiven for his anti-Semitic remarks. “Yep. The Middle East is on fire. Iran is thumbing its nose at the U.N. North Korea is launching rockets. There’s an election just a couple months off and the best they can come up with is Mel Gibson?” the blogger responded. “Journalism. Wound. Self-inflicted.”
“I was watching Special Report and there was a story on the upcoming renovation of the White House Press Briefing Room. My goodness! Such whining from the press corps about the size and state of the current room,” remarked Lady Jane. “In a democracy, the people’s money should be spent on the people, not on people who make up stories for a living. If the press corps wants a lovely, perfect room, they can have a bake sale and raise the money themselves. WE don’t owe THEM anything. This is just another example of the MSM’s belief in its own superiority and deservedness.”
We turn to a MSM blogger for the last word — NBC’s David Gregory, who complained just a little about his colleagues’ lackluster “effort to show respect for the space we occupy.” (“Example? About a year ago Tom Hanks donated a fancy espresso machine to the room and these days I wouldn’t dare drink from it.”)
“This is a glamorous job, but I sit in a booth the size of a broom closet. And my NBC co-workers and I work close enough to each other to do dental exams. I don’t mean to go on a rant here, but the NBC seat in the first row of the briefing room has also been broken for a while,” Gregory posted at the Daily Nightly, before mourning “the loss of this historic site.”
“And then I get over it,” Gregory concluded. “I realize in nine months this place will be cleaner, more modern and more spacious. Bring on the bulldozers.”
Edward B. Colby was a writer at CJR Daily.