My father in the 40s and 50s (not so long ago in the scope of things) sm
Posted By: MeMT on 2008-10-10
In Reply to: a friend of mine has grandparents who were slaves... - MAX
Was a white child growing up with no mother and an alcoholic father. A black woman who lived nearby with her own children used to let him come and eat with them. If not, he would not have survived. As he grew up, he didn't see race as a boundary...he had many friends both black and white. He loved to dance and in those days there were "black" dance halls and "white" dance halls. He liked the music and dancing better in the "black" dance halls and loved to go there and dance with his friends. The KKK came to our house one day in the late 60s and stomped my father while wearing golf cleats all over his body. We have come soooo far since then, but there are still people who bear the scars of those days. I think for the majority, prejudice is dying off. We are realizing how utterly ridiculous it is to judge someone by their skin color, blue, purple or orange. But I do agree there are still some who are hurt and cannot trust. The only racists or bigots I see these days are very uneducated and unintelligent people. I hope and pray we can all just get along and that no one hurts anyone else over all of this. My 11-year-old son said to me months ago, before Obama was even nominated, that he was afraid if Obama was elected someone would try to assassinate him, and that the same thing might even happen if Hillary was elected. My 11-year-old child could see that with his own eyes, even before I saw for myself the hatred that some people have. God help us protect whichever candidate wins, because there will be enemies either way.
Complete Discussion Below:  marks the location of current message within thread
The messages you are viewing
are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select
the boards given in left menu
Other related messages found in our database
I forgot it a long time ago......some things are
xx
Did we know the scope of his atrocities then?
I'm going to have research that a little bit, because I was just a kid in the eighties. I don't know the exact year the turning point happened with Iraq.
I have a question for you though, would you like to see Saddam back in power? I'm just kind of wondering whose side you're on?
Must have. Guess my scope was too narrow.
Besides that, while comparing one to the other, some folks might make a few distinctions between the 2. Studds was openly gay US federal level politician, a seat he held for 24 years. In 1973 he had a legal, consensual relationship/affair with a 17-year-old minor congressional page (age of consent being 17), Dean T. Hara, who became his partner for life and who he later MARRIED in 2004 Evidently, they had to wait for gay marriage to become legal, or would have married much earlier. Hara had clearly stated "knew exactly what he was doing" when he had the affair with Studds. Since the act was legal, no charges were filed and Studds received a congressional censure for inappropriately engaging in a relationship with a subordinate, after which he was re-elected to 6 consecutive terms. Studds worked consistently for same-sex marriage, AIDS funding and civil rights for gays and lesbians. His behavior was entirely consistent with his politics. Studds was no hypocrite. He died 2 short years after he was finally allowed to marry the love of his life.
Fast forward to the current century. Mark Foley one of the foremost opponents of child porn, worked on behalf of missing and exploited children and worked to outlaw web sites featuring sexually explicit images of preteen children, which he considered as a "fix for pedophiles." He also worked for tougher sex offender laws. Upstanding guy, yes?
Enter the creep factor. Behind the scene, he was sending solicitous e-mails and IMs to former teenage male congressional pages OVER A PERIOD OF TEN YEARS. To his credit, I suppose, in at least 2 cases, he waited until after the boys turned 18 and 21 respectively, before having sex with them. He sent 5 emails to a former 16-year-old page in 2004, when among other things he requested the minor send his photo and remarked about the great physical attributes of another underage page to him. He reported this to a senior official and said he had been warned about other female pages who had been "hit on."
In 2002, he invited a 17-year-old over for oral sex, an offer the youth declined. He had asked another for a photo of his erect penis. That guy knew 4 or 5 other pages who had received similar sexually explicit emails. There were at least another half-dozen or so pages who received the sexually explicit IMs.
There's more, but it is pretty sordid and would be quite time-consuming to get into on this forum. Suffice to say that these "advances" were unwanted and unsolicited. They occurred over a decade with so many pages one loses count and were reflective of a pattern of sick, sick behavior. There was the spectre of stalking underpinning the episodes. All of this was occurring while the HYPOCRITE was doing the above described "good works" legislation.
Studds and Foley were both indiscrete, to be sure, but beyond that, there is no real comparison. Call me crazy here, but somehow, I do not see these 2 behaviors as being the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
Must have. Guess my scope was too narrow.
Besides that, while comparing one to the other, some folks might make a few distinctions between the 2. Studds was openly gay US federal level politician, a seat he held for 24 years. In 1973 he had a legal, consensual relationship/affair with a 17-year-old minor congressional page (age of consent being 17), Dean T. Hara, who became his partner for life and who he later MARRIED in 2004 Evidently, they had to wait for gay marriage to become legal, or would have married much earlier. Hara had clearly stated "knew exactly what he was doing" when he had the affair with Studds. Since the act was legal, no charges were filed and Studds received a congressional censure for inappropriately engaging in a relationship with a subordinate, after which he was re-elected to 6 consecutive terms. Studds worked consistently for same-sex marriage, AIDS funding and civil rights for gays and lesbians. His behavior was entirely consistent with his politics. Studds was no hypocrite. He died 2 short years after he was finally allowed to marry the love of his life.
Fast forward to the current century. Mark Foley one of the foremost opponents of child porn, worked on behalf of missing and exploited children and worked to outlaw web sites featuring sexually explicit images of preteen children, which he considered as a "fix for pedophiles." He also worked for tougher sex offender laws. Upstanding guy, yes?
Enter the creep factor. Behind the scene, he was sending solicitous e-mails and IMs to former teenage male congressional pages OVER A PERIOD OF TEN YEARS. To his credit, I suppose, in at least 2 cases, he waited until after the boys turned 18 and 21 respectively, before having sex with them. He sent 5 emails to a former 16-year-old page in 2004, when among other things he requested the minor send his photo and remarked about the great physical attributes of another underage page to him. He reported this to a senior official and said he had been warned about other female pages who had been "hit on."
In 2002, he invited a 17-year-old over for oral sex, an offer the youth declined. He had asked another for a photo of his erect penis. That guy knew 4 or 5 other pages who had received similar sexually explicit emails. There were at least another half-dozen or so pages who received the sexually explicit IMs.
There's more, but it is pretty sordid and would be quite time-consuming to get into on this forum. Suffice to say that these "advances" were unwanted and unsolicited. They occurred over a decade with so many pages one loses count and were reflective of a pattern of sick, sick behavior. There was the spectre of stalking underpinning the episodes. All of this was occurring while the HYPOCRITE was doing the above described "good works" legislation.
Studds and Foley were both indiscrete, to be sure, but beyond that, there is no real comparison. Call me crazy here, but somehow, I do not see these 2 behaviors as being the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
The book is titled "Dreams From My Father" not "Dreams of My Father."
The propaganda sent out and posted here yesterday with blatantly false and out-of-context racist quotes ignorantly referred to the book as "Dreams of My Father." Although you have repeated over and over and over again that Obama is a socialist, it was one of your cronies, ms, who stated that "Obama is a socialist and probably a closet communist, masquerading as the most liberal democrat in the senate."
Isn't google wonderful? For expanding your narrow scope? sm
I also remember them comparing the two a while back, especially since Studds passed away recently. I guess it does depend on whose imagination you're stretching, doesn't it.
Nice of you to be so graphic about it.
typo - meant cite things as hoax, not "site" things
Just thought I'd correct that before I get pummeled by the people who want to believe snopes is a truthful organization.
You'll be waiting a long, long time, then, cuz she's going to do
He died a long, long time ago! (If he was ever
Don't force your beliefs on others. It further devalues your faith in the eyes of others.
what about a father's right?
Just curious if anybody even considers the father's rights?
If your father-in-law s/m
is making GROSS $250,000 from his business, he is definitely not wealthy in my book. On the other hand if his taxable income is $250,000 I see nothing wrong with him paying more taxes than someone with a taxable income of say $40,000.
I do not believe that Obama is going to tax the rich to give to the poor. I have not heard that a single time from his MOUTH. IF and I say IF, he is successful, your father-in-law would most likely get a reduction in taxes. This thing of Obama the modern day Robin Hood is so far out in left field it doesn't even deserve serious consideration. People seem to believe McCain whatever he says.
Father Jonathan Gets It
Culture: The Battleground for the American Soul
by Father Jonathan Morris
I don't know if anyone cares how I feel after Election Day. In case you do, here's the scoop; I'm happy, with some reservation.
I'm happy to live in a democracy where my vote counts, and no more than the next guy's. I'm happy to be able to trust government workers to tally the ballots. I'm happy there are winners and losers, and happy to hear concession speeches peppered with “I'll be back” and “Don't lose hope.” Yes, today I'm happy — I'm very happy to be an American.
My reservation is deeply seeded. My concern has little to do with partisan politics, with house or Senate control. I could care less about red or blue or right or left. And for goodness sake, I'm rather indifferent to the emotional pull of a clunky elephant or a rickety donkey.
Having followed the major issues and the hottest campaigns of this midterm election, I'm concerned that Americans — on both sides of the aisle — are losing the ability to know what they are fighting for, and why it matters. I'm concerned we are losing the battle for the American soul.
“A Battle for the American Soul?” To some, the phrase itself may sound like simplistic punditry — mouth-candy, cliché, and passé, altogether juvenile.
If I didn't live in Europe, I might agree. But a few years on this side of the Atlantic, combined with regular glances back at the history books, I am convinced America has possessed and still possesses a unique, positive and powerful soul, carried in the hearts of her citizens. In this century alone, it has saved the world more than once.
I am also convinced that now, as never before, the American soul is the target of heavy and deadly fire. The sharpshooters, this time, come primarily from within.
Sordid politics can't take the full blame for our predicament. The real battleground for the American soul is CULTURE.
The word is not easy to define. I think it is a nation's portfolio of values — her priorities, ethics, conceptions, and traditions. It is the common philosophy of life, a mindset, and mentality, a way of judging, acting, and reacting. Culture, we can say, creates in us a collective understanding of who we are and what we are about.
While culture is bigger than politics, in a representative democracy like ours, the quality of politics is a cultural bellwether, a group bill of health. From the sight of all things political these days, I would say our culture is sick.
Some have said the outcome of this election was all about Iraq. I don't think it is so simple. Large numbers of Republicans have proven themselves untrustworthy in character and policy. In their tenure as majority leaders in Congress, they have done some good things, but they have vacillated in their stated priorities. They have failed to push forward the confirmation of important judgeships, truncated integral immigration reform, and most recently, were weak on social ballot initiatives like the Missouri stem cell research amendment and mandatory parental consent for minors seeking abortions.
The deeper problem is not policy. It is the superficial nature of political discourse. Republicans have set themselves up as the pro-life, pro-family party, and its platform promises to protect both. But much like the Democrats, its members have been unconvincing in explaining why they believe what they do. When is the last time you have heard a politician explain why life is precious, and why it is sacred? When is the last time you heard a politician give a discourse on the origin and foundation of human rights? When have you heard a Congressman or Senator lay out a reasoned explanation of a just war, given the new type of unconventional enemies?
This dumbing-down of politics is both a consequence and cause of cultural decline.
Democrats are now in the spotlight and we are watching. On Wednesday, new House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi pointed to a painting behind her, hanging on the wall of the Library of Congress. She signaled a figure burning a scroll of learning and trampling on the Bible. The title of the painting was “Corrupt Government.” She explained:
“It is a harsh image to see a Bible underfoot, but it makes a powerful point: corrupt government undermines our values. We come here today to support those values, and to lay out an agenda for a new era of honest, open, and transparent government.”
It would seem Nancy Pelosi is saying the values of America can be found in the Bible. I am impressed. Maybe she knows America was founded on Judeo-Christian beliefs and plans on entering the battle to save the American soul. To do this, she will have to hold Democratic policy up to that very high standard. I'm not holding my breath.
If there is one thing to remember, it is this: culture, not politics alone, determines our national identity, and building culture is the responsibility of us all. We can do it in our homes, schools, and places of work, even as politicians fumble around on Capitol Hill. If you need a guidebook, ask Nancy Pelosi. She just might point to the Bible.
God bless, Father Jonathan
I love Father Jonanthan, but I don't believe Nancy Pelosi is going to be pointing anyone toward the Bible, because she would have to throw the Democratic party platform right out the window wtith the other hand. But, I believe the Bible is the guidebook. And, in God's own words, (paraphrasing), Let ye who are called by my name turn from your sin and pray, I will hear from Heaven, forgive you and heal your land. Ye who are called by my name, I believe that to be Christians. Let it start with me, then, because I love my country and the principles she was founded on, and I would love to see her restored. God bless!
Ok here is a better example...my father is Christian
x
Well his father's methods must be used in just about
every sort of rally, sporting event, etc. known then. Did anyone actually read it? Am I the only 1 who doesn't understand how gathering a large group of people, who all support the same thing, having them cheer for it, etc. has anything to do with communism? Please explain.
Father died at age 70 nm
nm
No, how about Father Phleger! LOL
nm
His father lived with him...
And he felt different feelings than just wanting a male friend. He struggled with it from age 8 to 16 and finally came out. He is 19 years old and openly gay now and was a VIRGIN by the way the last I heard, yep he has relationships with guys with no "sodomizing" involved, amazing huh, that it can be about something other than sex. God forbid it just be that he actually has FEELINGS for the same sex.
SO WHAT. My father is an alcoholic, doesn't
looking for reasons to hate someone. IT's sad. Grow up.
obama was abandoned by his father
yet he worked through his adolescent problems and worked his way to first black president of the Harvard Law Review. What an extraordinary man.
cnn - palin's father and sister
to speak about her. Why won't she be interviewed? What are the repubs hiding by keeping her in a cocoon?
A Letter to My Republican Father...sm
Here is a link to "A Letter to My Republican Father" that I came across yesterday. I think it makes some awfully good points about John McCain. It may be helpful for anyone who is undecided about him:
http://web.me.com/davidvwhite/Site/Welcome.html
Hubby's father told him we would
see a depression in our lifetime that would be 10 times worse than the great depression. This was back in the ླྀs. My husband always hung on to that statement and believes this is it. It's coming and there is nothing that will stop it. That's why we have been buying extra canned and dried goods when possible. We always made sausage and smoked a lot of pork but of course, we can't have animals here because of zoning, so we buy from a local farmer.
I know how to make bread and butter and have plenty of flour stored, but butter is going to be another issue since we don't have a cow and the last dairy farmer went out of business 10 years ago.
His father was a Kenyan citizen. We all know that. What is ...sm
your point. He was not adopted by his Kenyan father. The point is that his mother was an American citizen. It doesn't matter where he was born. What is it that you don't understand about that? Mexicans and Canadians, as well as students and others from many other foreign citizens give birth every year and their children are American citizens. If what you say is true, and I do not believe it for a minute, why would you think that an American citizen giving birth in a foreign country would not automatically convey citizenship onto her baby? Get real. This is not what the constitution intends. This is just a diversionary tactic by desperate people.
My father worked in a factory
for 30 years at GM. He was a salvage worker so he wasn't one of those guys who sat on his butt all day long making a ridiculous amount of money. My dad retired in his 60s because his health didn't allow him to continue working or he would have. I know how unions work and how they "protect" the employees. I've also seen the proven statistics about how non-union states are more production and have higher job growth and as far as protecting your job.....no ones job is protected especially nowadays. People are getting fired left and right so where is the protection. What good was that auto bailout when all that money pretty much went to pay off the unions. Unions are nothing but democratic pushed BS.
Here is a tad bit on unions:
The truth is that unions are essentially parasitic organizations that thrive only by draining and ultimately destroying the companies and industries they control. The essential goal of the unions is to compel the payment of higher wages for the performance of less work and less productive work. Unions are notorious for their hostility to labor saving machinery and to any form of competition among workers, for featherbedding practices, indeed, for “making work” by deliberately and arbitrarily increasing the number of workers required to accomplish a given task and sometimes even by compelling the disassembly or destruction of products already produced.
It should be no wonder that the percentage of the labor force controlled by unions tends progressively to decline. Where the unions hold sway, companies cannot compete. Their market share falls and they ultimately go bankrupt. The only way that unions can maintain any given share of the labor force is by finding new victims to replace the ones they have sucked dry. The finding of new victims, by means of new government intervention is the unstated agenda of Mr. Stern, Ms. Milkman, and The New York Times.
The actual effects of labor unions are arbitrary inequalities in wage rates, mass unemployment, and substantially lower real wages for the average worker. Labor unions are aptly described as a leading vehicle of what von Mises called “destructionism.”
Whenever a union succeeds in obtaining above market wage rates for its members, it also reduces the number of workers who can be employed in its field. This is because of the operation of one of the best established principles of economics: Namely, the higher the price of anything, including the wage of any kind of labor, the smaller is the quantity demanded of that good or labor service.
Thus, workers who could have been employed in the lines controlled by labor unions are instead displaced and forced to seek work elsewhere. The added competition of these workers in other lines then serves either to depress wage rates in those other lines, thereby resulting in an arbitrary, union-imposed inequality in wage rates, or, if those other lines are also unionized or are forced to pay union wages in order to avoid becoming unionized (which is often the case), to cause still other workers to be displaced. It should be clear that to the extent that the effect of union activity is to depress wage rates in other fields, the union slogan “Live Better, Work Union” turns out to mean “Live Better by Forcing Other Workers to Live Worse.”
If wage rates in all lines of work are forced above the free-market level either because labor unions are able to impose their wage scales everywhere, or because upward union pressure on wage rates is joined by minimum-wage legislation, the effect is mass unemployment. In this case, there is simply no branch of the economic system that is allowed to pay wage rates low enough to make possible the absorption of workers displaced from elsewhere by the imposition of union wages. The result is the kind of situation presently existing in France and Germany, where unemployment is in excess of ten percent. And, of course, the cost of supporting the masses of unemployed falls mainly on the workers who manage to keep their jobs. Here higher taxes are their reward for “working union.”
For the full article: http://mises.org/story/1861
If you know who the father is - you need his permission for adoption also -
I don't think I would want to go to the man who raped me and say I want to give our child up, is that okay with you? I don't think when he says no, I will raise this child that I would want to turn over a child to that man to raise... and that is what would happen!
Would you want to take a child to prison to see his "daddy" for visitation because the court ordered it? Would you want to have to deal with him about child support?
I don't think so...
and just because the child was conceived in rape, believe me, as messed up as our court systems are, they would give that man visitation and the poor woman he had victimized would be victimized again and again and again!
The father of the Marine daughter also said the same thing. sm
I guess they are all just misguided and brainwashed. In fact, a lot of the military is saying this. But it doesn't shut people up, does it. Didn't in Vietnam either. Well, freedom of speech works both ways. But the left never seems to get that either.
Well, since by your own admission Obama was abandoned by his father....
and was raised by a single mother...but somehow that makes her a hero and these other women not so much?
Double standard lately???
And Obama calls this man his political father, his
who got him interested in politics. Why is that? You can believe there isn't racism there if you want, but I can't put my head in the sand.
His Indonesian father adopted him who lived ONLY
nm
In this case, when the father is a rapist, EVERYTHING IS WRONG..
one has to be honest and disclose to the adoptive parents that the father is a rapist! Wow!
Or are you going to keep this a secret?
So what? JFKs father thought Hitler was a great man. sm
So did Charles Lindberg. This doesn't MEAN anything. You are really going off the deep deep end.
Raised by a Muslim father and Christian mother
It is a crock, it was refuted. You live in a very small world with no understanding of other cultures. That picture shows me that when he returned to Kenya to meet his father's family, he put on clothing that other Kenyan men wear...Christians and Muslims alike. When I lived in the Middle East with my husband and his family, I wore Hijab and covered my head out of RESPECT for them and for the people whose country I was visiting. Respect obviously is a foreign concept to you. Christiane Amanpour is a Christian who travels to the Middle East and when she does, she covers her head and wears hijab, like she did when she made God's Warriors. Barbara Walters wears a head cover when traveling in the Middle East. She is a Christian. I will not waste my time citing any other examples to support my claim that you are so small minded, bigoted and misinformed it borders on the criminal.
Thjis proves exactly Kaydie's father's philosophy...nm
nm
Looks like a loving father thanking his kids for inspiring him
getting them ready for their journey there with him, talking about where they have been, how they got to where they are and where they are going from here.
My sympathy to those not able to come along for the ride.
My "messiah" is Jesus, and he is with the Heavenly Father; the President.....sm
is very hard at work trying to please everyone because he can seem to do no right to the right, and also he is trying to build a ladder so we can climb out of the gigantic chasm that he inherited and sincerely wants to mend...with time, patience, sacrifice, perseverance, bipartisan help, and by implementing new rules, regulations, and spending investments that will take time to turn things around, but he is BEING A PRESIDENT and not a trained chimp, looking the other way on difficult issues. OK, I know this will be flamed, but I don't see the EAGERNESS that many folk have about seeing our President fail....if HE fails, WE fail, and excuse me, it has only been a month. What did President Bush accomplish in 8 years besides spending trillions in a meansingless, unwinnable war, and making Cheney, Halliburton, and all his friends more money, while securing all their oil interests? I am trying so hard not to be partisan here, but these one-liners that are posted that do nothing but doom and ridicule a brand new president...why so intent on that???
Newsletter: MADONNA SAYS SHE OFFERED DAVID'S FATHER MONEY..sm
Madonna appeared on NBC's Today show yesterday (Wednesday, November 1st) to talk about her plans to adopt 13-month-old David Banda of Malawi. She told host Meredith Viera that the boy's father, Yohane Banda, refused her financial offer to help raise his son. Madge said, When I met (Yohane), I said I would be happy to bring (David) back to your village and help you financially raise him. And he said no. She added, I think he truly felt in his heart of hearts that -- and who knows if he was telling me the truth -- that he would have a better life with me. So, when he said no, that was my sign that it was my responsibility to look after him.
Madonna also said that she was saddened by all of the criticism surrounding her decision to adopt David, adding that a week ago she was in the depths of my depression about the negativity and the state of the world. She thinks that racism has something to do with the reaction as well, saying, I think a lot of people have a problem with the fact that I've adopted an African child, a child who has a different color skin than I do...I think it's still considered taboo. You know, I have people say to me on the streets, 'Why did you adopt a black child?'
As for David, Madonna said he's doing well, describing him as very flirtatious and hysterically funny. He also has a temper.
More of Madonna's interview will air today (Thursday, November 2nd).
Meanwhile, David's father said in a recent interview, Madonna was like a bulldozer who has cleared the way for a better life for my son, according to the Associated Press.
Madonna's new children's book, The English Roses, Too Good To Be True, came out last week.
His father was a Kenyan. His mother married an Indonesian man who adopted him. However, no one...s
no matter who adopts you, gives up their US citizenship. Only that person at age 21 can do that. Obama had the choice at 21 to adopt Indonesion or Kenyan citizenship, but he chose to remain an American citizen.
not THEIRS, mother is American and Catholic, father and stepfather Muslim..
yes and Islamic teachings only t h e s e 4 years in Jakarta, Indonesia, and maybe only 2 years.
Barack was 7-11 years old at that time.
Ovarian cancer. McCain's father died of a heart attach...sm
around 70 I think. FYI, Obama quit.
Obama's mother is white, his father was black, making him an oreo.
nm
Obama was born in US, his FATHER was born in Kenya, check it out and sm
Do you really think the campaign would have gotten this far if he was born in Kenya? Did Hannity tell you that? LOL!!!!
He was born to a Muslim father and raised Muslim
for a time. You don't get to choose to drop out of that religion. Doesn't matter if you were born into it and didn't choose it to begin with. Leaving earns you a death sentence, especially such a public conversion to another religion. Why does he get to be a Christian now and nobody in radical Islam is calling for his head on pike? Unless.......
how long
back and forth through my working day about 20 minutes or less.
Very long and quite sad
At least she got to go home to Ireland.
The Sunday Times October 09, 2005
Ireland: I wanted to slap him
George W Bush was so upset by Carole Coleman’s White House interview that an official complaint was lodged with the Irish embassy. The RTE journalist explains why the president made her blood boil
With just minutes to go to my interview with George W Bush, I was escorted to the White House library, where a staff member gave instructions on how to greet the president: “He’ll be coming in the door behind you, just stand up, turn around and extend your hand.”
I placed my notes on the coffee table, someone attached a microphone to my lapel, and I waited. The two chairs by the fireplace where the president and I would sit were at least six feet apart; clearly I would not be getting too close to him.
*
The room was well-lit, providing the kind of warm background conducive to a fireside chat. Several people had crowded in behind me. I counted five members of the White House film crew, there was a stenographer sitting in the corner and three or four security staff. I was still counting them when someone spoke. “He’s coming.”
I stood up, turned around to face the door and seconds later the president strode towards me. Bush appeared shorter than on camera and he looked stern and rather grey that day.
“Thanks for comin’, Mr President” I said, sticking out my hand. I had borrowed this greeting directly from him. When Bush made a speech at a rally or town hall, he always began by saying “Thanks for comin’” in his man-of-the-people manner. If he detected the humour in my greeting, he didn’t let on. He took my hand with a firm grip and, bringing his face right up close to mine, stared me straight in the eyes for several seconds, as though drinking in every detail of my face. He sat down and an aide attached a microphone to his jacket.
Nobody said a word. “We don’t address the president unless he speaks first,” a member of the film crew had told me earlier. The resulting silence seemed odd and discomforting, so I broke it. “How has your day been, Mr President?” Without looking up at me, he continued to straighten his tie and replied in a strong Texan drawl, “Very busy.”
This was followed by an even more disconcerting silence that, compounded by the six feet separating us, made it difficult to establish any rapport.
“Will Mrs Bush be seeing any of our beautiful country?” I tried again, attempting to warm things up by adding that I had heard that the taoiseach would be keeping him too busy for sightseeing on his forthcoming trip to Ireland.
“He’s putting me to work, is he? Have you not interviewed Laura?” “No, I haven’t met your wife.” I suggested that he put in a good word for me. He chuckled. By now he seemed settled and the crew looked ready, but still nobody spoke. I was beginning to worry that the clock may have already started on my 10 minutes.
“Are we all ready to go then?” I asked, looking around the room. The next voice I heard was the president’s. “I think we have a spunky one here,” he said, to nobody in particular.
MC, a White House press officer whom I’ve decided not to identify, had phoned me three days earlier to say that President Bush would do an interview with RTE. “Good news,” she had said. “It goes this Thursday at 4.20pm. You will have 10 minutes with the president and Turkish television will talk to him just before you.”
My initial excitement was dampened only by the timing, much later than I had hoped. The interview would take place just three hours before I was to fly back to Ireland to cover his arrival at the EU summit at Dromoland Castle in Clare and just 15 minutes before the start of RTE’s Prime Time programme on which the interview would be broadcast. It would be practically impossible to have the president on air in time for this.
“That’s fabulous,” I gushed, “but is there any way I could go before the Turks?” I had previously explained about the Prime Time programme, so MC knew the situation. “I’ll look into it,” she offered.
The interview sounded like quite a production. We wouldn’t be able to just saunter in there with a camera. It would be filmed by a White House crew, which would then hand over the tapes to me to be copied and returned the same day.
MC asked me for a list of questions and topics, which she said was required for policy purposes in case I should want to ask something that the president needed to be briefed on. The request did not seem odd to me then. The drill had been exactly the same for an interview I had conducted six months earlier with the then secretary of state, Colin Powell.
“What would you ask the president of the United States?” I enquired of everyone I met in the following days. Ideas had already been scribbled on scattered notepads in my bedroom, on scraps of paper in my handbag and on my desk, but once the date was confirmed, I mined suggestions from my peers in RTE and from foreign policy analysts. I grilled my friends in Washington and even pestered cab drivers. After turning everything over in my head, I settled on a list of 10 questions.
Securing a time swap with Turkish television ensured that I saw the president 10 minutes earlier, but there was still less than half an hour to bring the taped interview to the production place four blocks away in time for Prime Time.
Still, with the arrangements starting to fall into place, the sense of chaos receded and I returned to the questions, which by now were perpetually dancing around my head, even in my sleep. Reporters often begin a big interview by asking a soft question — to let the subject warm up before getting into the substance of the topic at hand. This was how I had initially intended to begin with Bush, but as I mentally rehearsed the likely scenario, I felt that too much time could be consumed by his first probable answer, praising Ireland and looking forward to his visit. We could, I had calculated, be into the third minute before even getting to the controversial topics. I decided to ditch the cordial introduction.The majority of the Irish public, as far as I could tell, was angry with Bush and did not want to hear a cosy fireside chat in the middle of the most disputed war since Vietnam. Instead of the kid-glove start, I would get down to business.
*
On Thursday June 24, Washington DC was bathed in a moist 90-degree heat, the type that makes you perspire all over after you have walked only two blocks. Stephanie and I arrived at the northwest gate of the White House that afternoon, and were directed to the Old Executive Office building, Vice President Dick Cheney’s headquarters, and were introduced to MC, whom I had spoken to only by phone. An elegant and confident woman, she was the cut of CJ, the feisty White House press secretary on The West Wing television drama.
A younger male sidekick named Colby stood close by nodding at everything she said and interjecting with a few comments of his own every now and then. Colby suggested that I ask the president about the yellow suit the taoiseach had worn the previous week at the G8 Summit on Sea Island in Georgia. I laughed loudly and then stopped to study his face for signs that he was joking — but he didn’t appear to be. “The president has a good comment on that,” he said.
The taoiseach’s suit had been a shade of cream, according to the Irish embassy. But alongside the other more conservatively dressed leaders, it had appeared as a bright yellow, leaving our Bertie looking more like the lead singer in a band than the official representative of the European Union. It was amusing at the time, but I was not about to raise a yellow suit with the president. “Really?” I asked politely. But a little red flag went up inside my head.
Then MC announced that she had some news for me. “There may be another interview in the pipeline for you,” she said.
“Me?”
“We’re not supposed to tell you this yet, but we are trying to set up an interview with the first lady.”
She indicated that the White House had already been in contact with RTE to make arrangements for the interview at Dromoland Castle, where the president and Mrs Bush would be staying. As an admirer of Laura Bush’s cool grace and sharp intellect, I had requested interviews with her several times previously without any reply. Now the first lady of the United States was being handed to me on a plate. I could not believe my luck.
“Of course, it’s not certain yet,” MC added. And then her sidekick dropped his second bombshell. “We’ll see how you get on with the president first.”
I’m sure I continued smiling, but I was stunned. What I understood from this was that if I pleased the White House with my questioning of the president, I would get to interview the first lady. Were they trying to ensure a soft ride for the president, or was I the new flavour of the month with the first family?
“I’m going to give the president his final briefing. Are there any further questions you want to pass on to him?” MC asked.
“No,” I said, “just tell him I want to chat.”
Stephanie and I locked eyes and headed for the ladies’ powder room, where we prayed.
Mr President,” I began. “You will arrive in Ireland in less than 24 hours’ time. While our political leaders will welcome you, unfortunately the majority of our people will not. They are annoyed about the war in Iraq and about Abu Ghraib. Are you bothered by what Irish people think?”
The president was reclining in his seat and had a half-smile on his face, a smile I had often seen when he had to deal with something he would rather not.
“Listen. I hope the Irish people understand the great values of our country. And if they think that a few soldiers represent the entirety of America, they don’t really understand America then . . . We are a compassionate country. We’re a strong country, and we’ll defend ourselves. But we help people. And we’ve helped the Irish and we’ll continue to do so. We’ve got a good relationship with Ireland.”
“And they are angry over Iraq as well and particularly the continuing death toll there,” I added, moving him on to the war that had claimed 100 Iraqi lives that very day. He continued to smile, but just barely.
“Well, I can understand that. People don’t like war. But what they should be angry about is the fact that there was a brutal dictator there that had destroyed lives and put them in mass graves and torture rooms . . . Look, Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, against the neighbourhood. He was a brutal dictator who posed a threat that the United Nations voted unanimously to say, Mr Saddam Hussein . . .”
Having noted the tone of my questions, the president had now sat forward in his chair and had become animated, gesturing with his hands for emphasis. But as I listened to the history of Saddam Hussein and the weapons inspectors and the UN resolutions, my heart was sinking. He was resorting to the type of meandering stock answer I had heard scores of times and had hoped to avoid. Going back over this old ground could take two or three minutes and allow him to keep talking without dealing with the current state of the war. It was a filibuster of sorts. If I didn’t challenge him, the interview would be a wasted opportunity.
“But, Mr President, you didn’t find any weapons,” I interjected.
“Let me finish, let me finish. May I finish?”
With his hand raised, he requested that I stop speaking. He paused and looked me straight in the eye to make sure I had got the message. He wanted to continue, so I backed off and he went on. “The United Nations said, ‘Disarm or face serious consequences’. That’s what the United Nations said. And guess what? He didn’t disarm. He didn’t disclose his arms. And therefore he faced serious consequences. But we have found a capacity for him to make a weapon. See, he had the capacity to make weapons . . .”
I was now beginning to feel shut out of this event. He had the floor and he wasn’t letting me dance. My blood was boiling to such a point that I felt like slapping him. But I was dealing with the president of the United States; and he was too far away anyway. I suppose I had been naive to think that he was making himself available to me so I could spar with him or plumb the depths of his thought processes. Sitting there, I knew that I was nobody special and that this was just another opportunity for the president to repeat his mantra. He seemed irked to be faced with someone who wasn’t nodding gravely at him as he was speaking.
“But Mr President,” I interrupted again, “the world is a more dangerous place today. I don’t know whether you can see that or not.”
“Why do you say that?”
“There are terrorist bombings every single day. It’s now a daily event. It wasn’t like that two years ago.”
“What was it like on September 11 2001? It was a . . . there was relative calm, we . . .”
“But it’s your response to Iraq that’s considered . . .”
“Let me finish. Let me finish. Please. You ask the questions and I’ll answer them, if you don’t mind.”
His hand was raised again as if to indicate that he was not going to tolerate this. Again, I felt I had no choice but to keep quiet.
“On September 11 2001, we were attacked in an unprovoked fashion. Everybody thought the world was calm. There have been bombings since then — not because of my response to Iraq. There were bombings in Madrid, there were bombings in Istanbul. There were bombings in Bali. There were killings in Pakistan.”
He seemed to be finished, so I took a deep breath and tried once again. So far, facial expressions were defining this interview as much as anything that was said, so I focused on looking as if I was genuinely trying to fathom him.
“Indeed, Mr President, and I think Irish people understand that. But I think there is a feeling that the world has become a more dangerous place because you have taken the focus off Al-Qaeda and diverted into Iraq. Do you not see that the world is a more dangerous place? I saw four of your soldiers lying dead on the television the other day, a picture of four soldiers just lying there without their flak jackets.”
“Listen, nobody cares more about death than I do . . .”
“Is there a point or place . . .”
“Let me finish. Please. Let me finish, and then you can follow up, if you don’t mind.”
By now he was getting used to the rhythm of this interview and didn’t seem quite so taken aback by my attempt to take control of it. “Nobody cares more about death than I do. I care a lot about it. But I do believe the world is a safer place and becoming a safer place. I know that a free Iraq is going to be a necessary part of changing the world.”
The president seemed to be talking more openly now and from the heart rather than from a script. The history lesson on Saddam was over. “Listen, people join terrorist organisations because there’s no hope and there’s no chance to raise their families in a peaceful world where there is not freedom. And so the idea is to promote freedom and at the same time protect our security. And I do believe the world is becoming a better place, absolutely.”
I could not tell how much time had elapsed, maybe five or six minutes, so I moved quickly on to the question I most wanted to ask George Bush in person.
“Mr President, you are a man who has a great faith in God. I’ve heard you say many times that you strive to serve somebody greater than yourself.”
“Right.”
“Do you believe that the hand of God is guiding you in this war on terror?”
This question had been on my mind ever since September 11, when Bush began to invoke God in his speeches. He spoke as if he believed that his job of stewarding America through the attacks and beyond was somehow preordained, that he had been chosen for this role. He closed his eyes as he began to answer.
“Listen, I think that God . . . that my relationship with God is a very personal relationship. And I turn to the Good Lord for strength. I turn to the Good Lord for guidance. I turn to the Good Lord for forgiveness. But the God I know is not one that . . . the God I know is one that promotes peace and freedom. But I get great sustenance from my personal relationship.”
He sat forward again. “That doesn’t make me think I’m a better person than you are, by the way. Because one of the great admonitions in the Good Book is, ‘Don’t try to take a speck out of your eye if I’ve got a log in my own’.”
I suspected that he was also telling me that I should not judge him.
I switched to Ireland again and to the controversy then raging over the Irish government’s decision to allow the use of Shannon Airport for the transport of soldiers and weapons to the Gulf.
“You are going to meet Bertie Ahern when you arrive at Shannon Airport tomorrow. I guess he went out on a limb for you, presumably because of the great friendship between our two countries. Can you look him in the eye when you get there and say, ‘It will be worth it, it will work out’?”
“Absolutely. I wouldn’t be doing this, I wouldn’t have made the decision I did if I didn’t think the world would be better.”
I felt that the President had now become personally involved in this interview, even quoting a Bible passage, so I made one more stab at trying to get inside his head.
“Why is it that others don’t understand what you are about?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. History will judge what I’m about.”
I could not remember my next question. My mind had gone completely blank. The president had not removed me from his gaze since we had begun and I wanted to keep up the eye contact.
If I diverted to my notes on the table beside me, he would know he had flustered me. For what seemed like an eternity, but probably no more than two seconds, I stared at him, searching his eyes for inspiration. It finally came.
“Can I just turn to the Middle East?”
“Sure.”
He talked about his personal commitment to solving that conflict. As he did so, I could see one of the White House crew signalling for me to wrap up the interview, but the president was in full flight.
“Like Iraq, the Palestinian and the Israeli issue is going to require good security measures,” he said.
Now out of time, I was fully aware that another question was pushing it, but I would never be here again and I had spent four years covering an administration that appeared to favour Israel at every turn.
“And perhaps a bit more even-handedness from America?” I asked, though it came out more as a comment.
The president did not see the look of horror on the faces of his staff as he began to defend his stance. “I’m the first president to have called for a Palestinian state. That to me sounds like a reasonable and balanced approach. I will not allow terrorists determine the fate, as best I can, of people who want to be free.”
Hands were signalling furiously now for me to end the interview.
“Mr President, thank you very much.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied, still half-smiling and half-frowning.
It was over. I felt like a delinquent child who had been reprimanded by a stern, unwavering father. My face must have been the same colour as my suit. Yet I also knew that we had discussed some important issues — probably more candidly than I had heard from President Bush in some time.
I was removing my microphone when he addressed me.
“Is that how you do it in Ireland — interrupting people all the time?”
I froze. He was not happy with me and was letting me know it.
“Yes,” I stuttered, determined to maintain my own half-smile.
I was aching to get out of there for a breath of air when I remembered that I had earlier discussed with staff the possibility of having my picture taken with the president. I had been told that, when the interview was over, I could stand up with him and the White House photographer would snap a picture. Not wanting to waste the opportunity, I stood up and asked him to join me.
“Oh, she wants the photograph now,” he said from his still-seated position. He rose, stood beside me and put an arm around my shoulder. Taking his cue, I put an arm up around his shoulder and we both grinned for the cameras.
In my haste to leave I almost forgot the tapes and had to be reminded by the film crew to take them. I and my assistants bolted out to the street. We ran, high heels and all, across Lafayette Park. Running through rush-hour traffic, I thought that this had to be about as crazy as a journalist’s job gets.
I had just been admonished by the president of the United States and now I was turning cartwheels in order to get the interview on air. As I dashed past a waste bin, I had a fleeting urge to throw in the tapes and run home instead.
At the studio I handed over the tapes. My phone rang. It was MC, and her voice was cold.
“We just want to say how disappointed we are in the way you conducted the interview,” she said.
“How is that?” I asked.
“You talked over the president, not letting him finish his answers.”
“Oh, I was just moving him on,” I said, explaining that I wanted some new insight from him, not two-year-old answers.
“He did give you plenty of new stuff.”
She estimated that I had interrupted the president eight times and added that I had upset him. I was upset too, I told her. The line started to break up; I was in a basement with a bad phone signal. I took her number and agreed to call her back. I dialled the White House number and she was on the line again.
“I’m here with Colby,” she indicated.
“Right.”
“You were given an opportunity to interview the leader of the free world and you blew it,” she began.
I was beginning to feel as if I might be dreaming. I had naively believed the American president was referred to as the “leader of the free world” only in an unofficial tongue-in-cheek sort of way by outsiders, and not among his closest staff.
“You were more vicious than any of the White House press corps or even some of them up on Capitol Hill . . .The president leads the interview,” she said.
“I don’t agree,” I replied, my initial worry now turning to frustration. “It’s the journalist’s job to lead the interview.”
It was suggested that perhaps I could edit the tapes to take out the interruptions, but I made it clear that this would not be possible.
As the conversation progressed, I learnt that I might find it difficult to secure further co-operation from the White House. A man’s voice then came on the line. Colby, I assumed. “And, it goes without saying, you can forget about the interview with Laura Bush.”
Clearly the White House had thought they would be dealing with an Irish “colleen” bowled over by the opportunity to interview the Bushes. If anyone there had done their research on RTE’s interviewing techniques, they might have known better.
MC also indicated that she would be contacting the Irish Embassy in Washington — in other words, an official complaint from Washington to Dublin.
“I don’t know how we are going to repair this relationship, but have a safe trip back to Ireland,” MC concluded. I told her I had not meant to upset her since she had been more than helpful to me. The conversation ended.
By the time I got to the control room, the Prime Time broadcast had just started. It was at the point of the first confrontation with the “leader of the free world” and those gathered around the monitors were glued to it. “Well done,” someone said. “This is great.”
I thought about the interview again as I climbed up the steps to RTE’s live camera position at Dromoland Castle to account for myself on the 6pm news next day. By now the White House had vented its anger to the Irish embassy in Washington. To make matters worse for the administration, the interview had made its way onto American television and CNN was replaying it around the world and by the end of the day it had been aired in Baghdad.
Had I been fair? Should I just have been more deferential to George Bush? I felt that I had simply done my job and shuddered at the thought of the backlash I would surely have faced in Ireland had I not challenged the president on matters that had changed the way America was viewed around the world.
Afterwards I bumped straight into the taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, who was waiting to go on air.
“Howya,” he said, winking.
“I hope this hasn’t caused you too much hassle, taoiseach,” I blurted.
“Arrah, don’t worry at all; you haven’t caused me one bit of hassle,” he smiled wryly.
I don’t know what he said to the president, who reportedly referred to the interview immediately upon arrival, but if the taoiseach was annoyed with me or with RTE, he didn’t show it.
When I returned to my little world on the street called M in Washington, I felt a tad more conspicuous than when I’d left for Ireland. Google was returning more than 100,000 results on the subject of the 12-minute interview. The vast majority of bloggers felt it was time a reporter had challenged Bush.
At the White House, the fact that I had been asked to submit questions prior to the interview generated enquiries from the American press corps. “Any time a reporter sits down with the president they are welcome to ask him whatever questions they want to ask,” Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, told the CBS correspondent Bill Plante.
“Yes, but that’s beside the point,” replied Plante.
Under repeated questioning, McClellan conceded that other staff members might have asked for questions. “Certainly there will be staff-level discussion, talking about what issues reporters may want to bring up in some of these interviews. I mean that happens all the time.”
I had not been prevented from asking any of my questions. The only topics I had been warned away from were the Bush daughters Jenna and Barbara, regular fodder for the tabloids, and Michael Moore — neither of which was on my list.
Moore did notice RTE’s interview with the president and in the weeks that followed urged American journalists to follow the example of “that Irish woman”.
“In the end, doesn’t it always take the Irish to speak up?” he said. “She’s my hero. Where are the Carole Colemans in the US press?”
© Carole Coleman 2005
BOOK OFFER
This article is extracted from the opening chapter of Alleluia America! by Carole Coleman, to be published by The Liffey Press on October 14 at €14.95.
Okay, as long as....SM
you don't mind you, your loved ones, or someone else's loved ones to be killed BEFORE we take action, we can sit around and see who attacks us next. But then of course, if Saddam had ordered an attack, or slipped the goods to someone to carry that attack out, you would have blamed Bush for not acting on all that intelligence we had before the war. You simply cannot have it both ways. In light of the fact that 3000 people perished in a couple of hours, I'm not afraid to stand behind a president brave enough to stand up to any threat.
What took them so long????
I heard the 34% was down to 29% for Bush and 18% for Cheney. It has taken this complete break down of our government for people to finally see what most of us have known all along. BUSH IS NOT QUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE ROTARY CLUB, LET ALONE THE U.S. The words incompetence and tin ear and arrogance are now coming out of the mouths of the staunchest of Republicans, senators, congressmen, strategists, advisors, etc. And the outright lies are finally coming to light, thanks to videotape. Of course we only have the pre Katrina tape but it shows those who absolutely refused to entertain the thought that his president was anything than honorable is, in fact, just a greedy arrogant politician like so many others. As I said before, time to storm the Bastille and throw them out, the whole sorry lot of them or we can always sell the country to the UAE. They would probably do a better job of running it than this poor excuse for an administration. As Isabel from Florida said on Lou Dobbs the other day, I could run this country better from my kitchen table. I believe her.
that is a long
string of words that is so illogical I just slap my rump and shout hallelujah. Not much more can be done other than that.
so as long as you don;t have to
pay for other people's children . . . you're okay with teenagers raising babies.
I come from a long
line of Twaddles, and we are a prominent family in our community.
Wow - how long did it take you to think of that one?
You should be one of Obama's political advisors. You know, you bein' so SMART an' all.
And your message was posted by: "?"
Does that stand for clueless or just 'can't spell my own name?'
I love Obama supporters. They're like children. Or really, really slow-learning monkeys. :)
Oh yes....and how long
did people scream and shout about how we were losing the surge in Iraq while we were successful? Obama didn't even want to admit we were successful when there was no way to dispute the fact. Just once, I would like to see you post something that isn't totally one-sided liberal, kool-aid drinking BS.
|
