Life inside the Village. Or, the Ed Henry debacle
March 26, 2009 8:32 am ET by Eric Boehlert
In retrospect, we should have posted odds going into Obama's press conference on the likelihood that the next day the press would make the press--not necessarily Obama--a big part of the story. And let me tell you, those would have been pretty good odds.
So no, we're not surprised that CNN's Ed Henry has written at cnn.com a first-person, insider account of his brief, and frankly uneventful, "back-and-forth" with Obama from Tuesday night. (Or Henry's "incoherent barrage of mostly pointless/redundant questions," as Gawker put it.)
CNN Headline: "Behind the scenes: Ed Henry's take on exchange with Obama." (Isn't the "behind the scenes" part priceless? Very VH1, we think.)
The piece is all about Henry's pre-debate "strategy" regarding which "provocative" question he was going to ask, and how he wanted to "make news" that night. See this Politico piece from earlier this week, which glorifies the pre-game stretching and warm-ups WH scribes now do before press conferences and how we're supposed to actually care what goes into reporters forming and crafting their rather ordinary White House queries.
Still, it doesn't get much more cringe-worthy than this, from Henry:
The pressure was on now because the president had called on me. Someone handed me a microphone, millions were watching, and it's scary to think about changing topic in a split second because you might get flustered and screw up.
Good God, isn't it his job to ask questions at White House press conferences? It wasn't like somebody suddenly asked Henry to jump out of an airplane Tuesday night.
UPDATE: We almost forgot the best/worst part from Henry's incestuous diary entry:
But on Tuesday night, as I sat in the front row nervously reviewing my hypothetical questions written out in longhand (decidedly old school), I kept thinking back to a conversation I had with Wolf Blitzer Saturday night at the Gridiron dinner.
What a bore: the inside of this guy's head is as dim as a 25 Watt light bulb...
You know whose "first-person insider account" I want to hear, of what they were thinking leading up to their turn at a Presidential press conference?
The guy who threw his shoes at George W. Bush, that's who.
ed henry: "Hey wolf, you seem to know most if not all things: what should I ask the President at the WH press conference, and how should I ask it?"
wolf blitzer: "Go right for the deficit spending issue. And as far as how you should ask it, invoke the President's two young daughters, and imply that he's perhaps a bad father, in addition to being a bad President, for saddling those children with such a deficit."
ed henry: "Sounds like a good idea to me! If there's any downside to it, I can't see it."
Ed Henry: On Tuesday night, as I sat in the front row I went from jittery to downright anxious. I, Ed Henry, would be asking the President of the United States a question during a televised prime-time press conference! I was totally twittering Squee!! and OMG!! over and over in my head.
My hands began to sweat. To calm myself I started thinking about my conversation at the Gridiron dinner with that unflappable legend of Beltway stenogrophy, Wolf Blitzer. But somehow my Remembrance of Things This Past Weekend went horribly wrong! I lost focus and found myself reliving a different memorie of earlier that same evening when, in the crush of bodies in the cloakroom, I had found myself pinned -- pelvis to rump -- with the voluptuous Candy Crowley. At first I was being pushed forward by the crowd, and she was being pushed back, but after a little while I realized we had been alone for the last few moments! She finally turned and our eyes met. It set off an an explosion of special effects inside my head that made the set of The Situation Room seem sedate by comparison..
But now, just as then, as I shook myself from my reverie, I realized I was "catching wood". Panic set in! Here I was moments away from standing up in front of the television cameras to ask the President a question! What I was going to ask wasn't even a consideration now, only how I was going to avoid repeating that unseemly embarassment I experienced in the seventh grade when I was asked to operate the overhead projector just after the girls filed in from gym class!
Continued next time: I quickly do the times-tables backwards and try to remeber the 1979 Pirates lineup in my head while impersonating Bernie Shaw.
Oh pul-l-l-e-e-e-ze!!!! We're supposed to care about notes he writes to himself?!?!? Anybody is going to look at notes he wrote to himself and say "Hey man you wrote your notes in longhand!"?
Whatever is the current fashion for that these days?
And these people wonder why we compare them to the French aristocracy of Louis XVI.
"Great" job as usual MMFA. But a warning to your "excellent" coverage on Ed Henry, CNN's WH Reporter - Ed will become offended and think MMFA is after him because he asked questions to President Obama.
And boy oh boy, FoxNews and Rush will call MMFA out on being "unfair" of reporting the "exact" words of Ed's that attacked Ed for his "exact" words used to question President Obama. Wink, wink.
Roland Burton Heldy Jr. lives
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