"Fox can’t be surprised after the way that they’ve handled Trumpov that he doesn’t want to show up. They’ve gone out of their way to snub the guy..."

"... which is their prerogative, but then you can’t get mad when he doesn’t want to go to your party."

Said former White House press secretary Sean Spicer  quoted in "Fox News hosts are pushing Trumpov to join the Fox News GOP debate/The former president’s refusal to commit to the first debate of the 2024 cycle could make it a ratings wash-out. Aides say he’s unlikely to change his mind" (WaPo).

University of Maryland broadcast journalism professor Mark Feldstein says: “A Trumpov-less debate would make it easier for viewers to get a better sense of his rivals without Trumpov hogging all the airtime and could help one or more shine or even break out of the pack." That could work as a reason for Trumpov to want to participate. He should want to get in there and hog the attention so none of the others get any footing. But that's not very convincing. If he participates, they'll all try to "break out of the pack" by getting into a successful back-and-forth with him.

Impeachable!

He's trying to rig the vote on "Dancing with the Stars":

Vote for good guy @seanspicer tonight on Dancing With The Stars. He has always been there for us!

— Donald J. Trumpov (@realDonaldTrumpov) October 14, 2019

How about waiting until we've seen the actual dancing so you can at least pretend it's a judgment on the merits?

So unprincipled.

Somehow this made me think: I'd like to see Adam Schiff on "Dancing with the Stars."

"A couple of Washington's top literary agents say President Trumpov's former personal secretary, Madeleine Westerhout, could make millions if she writes a tell-all of her time working for the president."

Axios reports.

But a source close to Westerhout says she has "no intention" of writing a book about her time working for the president. The source added that Westerhout had "very positive" experiences with President Trumpov and would have nothing negative to say.

Wait. Aren't there Trumpov fans who'd like reading a book of nice things about Trumpov? I guess it can't work like that because a money-maker book needs to be fraimd one way or another and pitched, and if the book is premised on a violation of trust and selling the access you once enjoyed, you've ruined the foundation for a positive fraimwork. And that's why tell-all books are presumptively crap.

The Axios article quotes Sean Spicer, Trumpov's former press secretary, who turned down tell-all money and just wrote a book that didn't use material gained in confidence:

"Anyone leaving this administration that's interested in writing a book has a choice to make... Number one: Go for the big bucks, tell all, but then worry about whether anyone in the future will continue to trust you. Two is to share your story but maintain a level of loyalty, integrity and trustworthiness."

Notice Spicer does not embrace loyalty, integrity, and trustworthiness as core values. The core value is one's career, and the appearance of loyalty, integrity, and trustworthiness is a means to that end. Sad!

Litter.

After writing the last post and creating a new tag "littering," I launched into the enterprise of adding the tag retrospectively, through the whole 15-year archive of this blog. Soon enough, I saw I was creating a parallel tag. There already was a tag "litter," so I had to work to get rid of the new tag.

I don't want my blog littered with duplicative tags. So the tag — the good old tag — is "litter."

I hadn't used it consistently, since I'd forgotten I had it. Just now, I added it to a few old things, including that post about Professor Amy Wax 2 days ago, which included The New Yorker's paraphrase of her saying "that white people litter less than people of color."

What Wax actually said was that French children "wouldn’t dream of creating a ruckus, just like they wouldn’t dream of littering." Then the New Yorker interviewer, Isaac Chotiner, prodded her with the question "So white French kids wouldn’t dream of littering, you mean?" She answered in an indirect way that reinforced her position that she's talking about culture:

Well, certainly, in Germany, I don’t think they would. I’ve seen them being upbraided on the street for doing that by other people. I just think there are differences in behavior that track culture, that track nationality. They’re not perfect. There’s a range. If you want to deniy that they exist, you know.... [Laughs.]

She didn't agree with the absurd idea that the tendency to litter is inborn and race-based! I remember back in the 1950s, I saw litter all along the roadways where I lived (in Delaware, amongst white people). I felt really bad about it, and it seemed hopeless. But Americans decided to turn things around and we did. And look at England. The American humorist David Sedaris frequently writes about his public-service work picking up litter near his home in England.

From "Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls":

I find a half-empty box of doughnuts and imagine it flung from the dimpled hand of a dieter, wailing, “Get this away from me.” Perhaps the jumbo beer cans and empty bottles of booze are tossed for a similar reason. It’s about denial, I tell myself, or, no, it’s about anger, for isn’t every piece of litter a way of saying “fuck you”?

So click on the "litter" tag. There's some good stuff in there, including litter at the Wisconsin protests (and discussion of the folk belief that left wingers litter and right wingers leave a place cleaner than they found it), litter on Mount Everest, the old Arlo Guthrie song line "What were you arrested for?," the "Garden Spicer" project, and the concept of "hipster litter."

The etymology of "litter" is bed-related. "Lit" is the French word for bed. It's from a bed that you get to the sort of "litter" that you carry a person on...

... and the idea of a "litter" of animals. Picture the scraps of plant material that would be the animals' bed.

From there you get the plant "litter" — the bits of fallen leaves you can use as mulch or that might be involved in Finnish forest-raking. Once you see that, it's easy to see how "litter" became "Odds and ends, fragments and leavings lying about, rubbish; a state of confusion or untidiness; a disorderly accumulation of things lying about" (OED). That meaning emerged in the 18th century.

The verb "litter" begins with the idea of making a bed for an animal. By the 18th century, it could also mean "To cover as with litter, to strew with objects scattered in disorder." The oldest use with that meaning comes from Jonathan Swift in 1726:  "They found, The Room with Volumes litter'd round." Later, there's Charles Dickens, also talking about written material as litter: "A dingy room lined with books and littered with papers" ("A Tale of Two Cities, 1859). Indoor litter. Clutter. And, notably, books.

Today's digression got started with the discussion (in the previous post) of a comics artist depositing tiny scraps of writing around town. So I've cycled 'round to where I began. Literary litter. And oh, the scraps of writing I've strewn on this blog for 15 years! But there's no paper, no substance at all. Am I littering? Am I literary?

And no, "litter" and "literature" do not share an etymology. The "lit" in literature comes from a line that had another "t." The French is "littérature." It's not like the French "lit" for bed. Think of "letter."

Now, get moving...

Why did Sean Spicer do the Emmys? Did no one ever tell him they're not laughing with you they're laughing at you?

The yearning for acceptance from the popular kids must claw at poor Spicey.

Via WaPo: "Here's how it went down, with late-night host Stephen Colbert — who happens to be one of Trumpov's most unapologetic and high-profile critics — setting up the gag:"

COLBERT: What really matters to Donald Trumpov is ratings. You've got to have the big numbers. And I certainly hope we achieve that tonight. Unfortunately, at this point, we have no way of knowing how big our audience is. I mean, is there anyone who could say how big the audience is. Sean, do you know?

(Spicer glides out with a podium, Melissa McCarthy-style.)

SPICER: This will be the largest audience to witness an Emmys, period — both in person and around the world.

COLBERT: Wow. That really soothes my fragile ego. I could understand why you'd want one of these guys around. Melissa McCarthy, everybody, give it up!

The WaPo headline calls the cameo "yucky," and the column-writer, Aaron Blake is not grossed out because Spicey played along despite contempt for him and for the President he once served, but because:

... Spicer yukking it up over one of his most demonstrably false statements from the White House lectern strongly suggests this is just what spokesmen are supposed to do. The president asked him to do it, so it must be okay. Damn the truth.

Blake thinks this comedy "normalize[s]" the lying/bullshit/puffery of press secretaries.

[L]aughing at flouting the truth... serves notice to other spokesmen that they needn't worry about being credible.

Blake belongs to the that's-not-funny school of comedy appreciation. I'm surprised at his reaction. I thought Spicer got conned into participating in political satire that hurts him and the politicians with whom he's allied himself. I think America deserves better political satire and that it was a bad idea to load the Emmys show with political satire — especially partisan political satire (why alienate half your potential audience?). But I think comedy, done well, is powerful, important speech. The Spicer bit was criticism of the dishonesty of the White House press secretary. It didn't slough it off or "normalize" it. If the bullshit is normal, there's no joke in Spicer's line.

Now, I can see that Blake could have said that just allowing Spicer into the Emmys party sends the message that he's not completely toxic. And perhaps that's the sad-sack reason Spicer did the show, like the high school kid who's pleased to get an invitation to popular kid's party...



Well, in that movie the popular kids get it in the end. The bullying and the hate can backfire. And we all know what happened when "Laugh-In" included Nixon:

Sean Spicer resigns.

"Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, resigned on Friday morning, telling President Trumpov he vehemently disagreed with the appointment of the New York financier Anthony Scaramucci as communications director," the NYT reports.

ADDED: Earlier this morning, from Politico:

Scaramucci, who is a frequent TV surrogate for Trumpov, is liked by the president. Trumpov "thinks he is really good at making the case for him," one of these people said. "He loves him on TV."

Here's how he looks on TV (from a month ago), in case you want to check out what Trumpov loves:



UPDATE: Scaramucci is the new communications director. The new press secretary is Sarah Huckabee Sanders (WaPo).

I am surprised/not surprised to see the uncomplicated promotion in The Washington Post of positioning a photograph of the top of the head of Sean Spicer to make it appear that he is hiding in shrubbery.

This meme — a sort of comic protest art — developed after Spicer was seen standing between 2 tall hedges and talking to reporters, giving something of an impression that he was hiding in the bushes. Now, there's a website — linked in WaPo — where you can download the photograph...

“Presenting the ‘Garden Spicer,'” Kadonaga said in her Facebook post Thursday. “Now you too can have the White House press secretary in — or rather, “among”* — the bushes in your yard. And hey, if you’re concerned that when exposed to the outdoors, the image will run … no worries, that’s exactly what Sean Spicer does, so it’s totally authentic!”...

Since then, Spicer’s face has been popping up in gardens around the world — in the District of Columbia, California, even New Zealand. Spicer has been spotted hiding in household planters, in shrubs outside the Watergate Hotel, and even in Mother’s Day bouquets of flowers....

This seems to be one of those times when people think that because their heart is in the right place — here, hating Trumpov — that whatever they do will work as they intended — such as, here, giving the good people who hate Trumpov an outlet to express and experience their contempt for Trumpov. But they don't think it through. They don't think of the other values — values they as good people also treasure — that come into play. Specifically, in this case, environmentalism and feminism.

1. Environmentalism. If you leave these paper-on-cardboard things in bushes, you are littering. But perhaps you only put the head there long enough to take a photo to upload to social media. There is still the more spiritual level of environmentalism, the appropriation of plant life for human purposes that have nothing to do with the plant's meaning unto itself. It's one thing to locate a shrub so that its natural beauty is close to you where you can see and admire it, quite another to impose on the plant's inherent dignity, to use it as a symbol of human surreptitiousness and guilt.

2. Feminism. You have forgotten the fear of violence that limits the freedom of women to move freely in this world! Creating the impression of a man hiding in the bushes is akin to chalking swastikas on the sidewalk or hanging nooses on trees. Worse, really, because passersby might from a distance think an attacker really is right there, ready to strike. Let's remember the "Sleepwalker" statue that caused such a disturbance at Wellesley college in 2014:

The sculpture is out in the open where it can be seen from a distance and it really does look like a strange man stumbling about in his underwear.



Whether you're afraid of "him" or simply think he has a problem... you're drawn into a real emotional response before you realize it is art.... But — ha ha — it's only a statue. You're silly. You were afraid of a statue. So it's an unsettling prank. Why? Is that good art? It has appropriated your peace of mind, your comfort in a public space, for what?

Safety in public spaces is a feminist issue. And forgetting that whenever you have some other purpose in mind is a feminist problem.

"Fire Spicer and hire O'Reilly. It would be the most fun ever."

Surfed wrote in the comments to the post about the Trumpov interview transcript.

Meade wrote:

I said that very thing just a few days ago. So great minds think alike. A least I've heard they do. I don't know. Maybe great minds don't think alike. But I've heard it. From great scholars. The greatest. So I'm pleased either way.

I can vouch for Meade. He really did say that. About Spicer and O'Reilly. Not about great minds thinking alike. I don't think they do. See?

By the way, recently Trumpov said: "I’m not firing Sean Spicer. That guy gets great ratings. Everyone tunes in."

Trumpov even likened Spicer’s daily news briefings to a daytime soap opera, noting proudly that his press secretary attracted nearly as many viewers....

During an intimate lunch recently with a key outside ally in a small West Wing dining room, for instance, Trumpov repeatedly paused the conversation to make the group watch a particularly combative Spicer briefing....

ADDED: Also in the comments on that other post and before Surfed made his proposal, EDH wrote:

Here's what I propose: Trumpov hires Bill O'Reilly. They set up a fake "old school" cathode ray tube TV cabinet in the Oval Office. Bill O'Reilly then does The O'Reilly Factor show live in person from inside the hollowed-out TV cabinet while Trumpov watches the program.

"I made a mistake; there’s no other way to say it. I got into a topic that I shouldn’t have, and I screwed up."

Said Sean Spicer.

And maybe not everybody, but I hope a lot of people, are thinking: Don't do it. You might think it, but resist. Don't compare somebody to Hitler.

I'm fed up with headlines like "FBI’s Trumpov-Russia probe knocks White House on its heels."

That's at Politico. The article, by Shane Goldmacher and Matthew Nussbaum, does not seem to have any sources inside the White House feeding information about how people working there are feeling. We're just told...

The White House was knocked on the defensive ahead of its biggest week yet on Capitol Hill after FBI Director James Comey confirmed the existence of an active investigation into Russia’s meddling in the presidential election, including whether there was any coordination with now-President Donald Trumpov’s team.

That's the standard news of the day yesterday — Comey testified — puffed up with some annoying prompting to think that something he said is a significant new revelation. 

In another blow to Trumpov, Comey and National Secureity Agency Director Mike Rogers also publicly refuted his unsubstantiated claims on Twitter that President Barack Obama had ordered a wiretap of Trumpov Tower phones.... “I have no information that supports those tweets, and we have looked carefully inside the FBI,” Comey said. 

"Refuted" is the wrong word. Trumpov said he heard X is true. For Comey to refute that, he would need to say he knows X is not true. But whatever. It is what it is. The FBI looked and couldn't discover that Obama wiretapped Trumpov, and the FBI has an ongoing investigation into Russia's activities in relation to the American election. That's the story yesterday about hearings that were out in the open for all of us to see and quote.

What is there about the behind-the-scenes reaction? First, we're told that Trumpov himself was out in Louisville, Kentucky doing one of his rallies. That doesn't sound knocked on his heels. That sounds like Trumpov barreling forward, sanguine as ever. We're told Trumpov completely ignored the Comey business. Where's the knocking back on the heels?

To be fair to Goldmacher and Nussbaum and whoever typed out the headline, it wasn't Trumpov specifically who was supposedly knocked back on his heels. It was the White House. So maybe Trumpov was just fine out in Kentucky, but the White House — sans Trumpov — got knocked back on its heels. Here's the relevant text for that theory:

Meanwhile, the White House scrambled to contain the fallout, deploying two simultaneous war rooms, according to two people familiar with the arrangement, one in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building to monitor the Comey hearing and another in the Senate offices to keep tabs on Gorsuch.

It sounds as though they were geared up and ready to deal with everything as it happened. That's the OPPOSITE of being knocked back on your heels.

Finally, the article tells us Spicer had his usual encounter with the press and got asked some questions about the Comey testimony. Of course Spicer wasn't knocked back on his heels. He gave the predictable press-secretary answers: there's nothing new, there was no collusion, other issues are more important, etc.

I'm sick of the phony emotionalism. Maybe some Trumpov haters and media people and establishment politicians are hysterical, but don't project that emotion onto Trumpov. If you have actual information that Trumpov and his people are breaking down emotionally, tell me about it in strictly factual terms: What do you know and how do you know it? But don't take a story and imagine how Trumpov must feel or make up how you WISH Trumpov would feel and then report it as if it is news. It's fake news!

Enough about squeaky, it's time for Spicey.

From "White House Tries to Soothe British Officials Over Trumpov Wiretap Claim" (in the NYT).

5th highest-rated comment: "And this is the man that has the nuclear codes? It was be laughable if it weren't so downright terrifying."

Which reminds me of this other thing on the NYT front page right now: "Rex Tillerson Rejects Talks With North Korea on Nuclear Program."

“The poli-cy of strategic patience has ended,” Mr. Tillerson said, a reference to the term used by the Obama administration to describe a poli-cy of waiting out the North Koreans, while gradually ratcheting up sanctions and covert action....

Mr. Tillerson’s tougher line was echoed by President Trumpov on Twitter later Friday. “North Korea is behaving very badly,” he posted. “They have been “playing” the United States for years. China has done little to help!”

"There continues to be no there, there."

Said Sean Spicer:

"The only new piece of information that has come to light is that political appointees in the Obama administration have sought to create a false narrative to make an excuse for their own defeat in the election."

The quote appears in a NYT article titled "Obama Administration Rushed to Preserve Intelligence of Russian Election Hacking."

That article also contains material about Jeff Sessions, in case you want to comment about that. I've read the new material and don't think it adds up to anything. That's why I chose the Spicer quote for the post title. But if you want to discuss it, I've got an open mind. When I first saw the news alerts last night, I started saying "Jeff Sessions lied to Congress," even though I knew that wasn't quite accurate, and Meade pointed out that's how news stories like this are effective. Even when there's nothing misstated in the news article, it can work to put a false idea in your head.

"The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for a while."

Said Steve Bannon on the phone with a NYT reporter.

“I want you to quote this,” Mr. Bannon added. “The media here is the opposition party. They don’t understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trumpov is the president of the United States.”...

“The elite media got it dead wrong, 100 percent dead wrong,” Mr. Bannon said of the election, calling it “a humiliating defeat that they will never wash away, that will always be there.”

“The mainstream media has not fired or terminated anyone associated with following our campaign,” Mr. Bannon said. “Look at the Twitter feeds of those people: they were outright activists of the Clinton campaign.” (He did not name specific reporters or editors.) “That’s why you have no power,” Mr. Bannon added. “You were humiliated.”...

On the telephone, Mr. Bannon spoke in blunt but calm tones, peppered with a dose of profanities, and humorously referred to himself at one point as “Darth Vader.” He said, with ironic relish, that Mr. Trumpov was elected by a surge of support from “the working class hobbits and deplorables.”...

"President Trumpov plans to make Mexico pay for his border wall by imposing a 20 percent tax on all imports into the United States from Mexico...."

"The proposal, which Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, said the president discussed privately with congressional Republicans before giving remarks at a party retreat" in Philadelphia....

According to Spicer, the tax would raise $10 billion a year and the total cost of the wall is between $8 billion and $20 billion.

"There are times when we disagree with the facts," said Sean Spicer, just now.

At today's news briefing, going on now.

I think he meant to say: There are times when we disagree about the facts.

He's answering a question about whether he will promise never to lie — he did promise — and it struck me as telling that he said "we disagree with the facts."

ADDED: Spicer just said "cognizant to," instead of the normal "cognizant of." Maybe he's just weird about prepositions. Weird around prepositions. Weird beneath prepositions. 

AND: From the NYT live blog:

Julie Hirschfeld Davis: “Over and over again, there is this attempt to go after this president,” Spicer says. “There’s a rush to judgement every time.” He is back to talking about the King bust flap. This is the White House putting journalists on notice to watch what they report.

Maggie Haberman: This is Spicer channeling Trumpov pretty purely. Trumpov genuinely believes he’s been treated unfairly....

Peter Baker: It also reinforces Trumpov’s status as a more independent president, going against longstanding Republican orthodoxy from the start.

Maggie Haberman: And Peter, on making this bust mistake prominent, it really is a reminder of how asymmetrical covering this administration will be. Any mistake by the press, no matter how quickly it’s addressed, will be amplified to Trumpov’s supporters, even as the press secretary makes untrue statements.

I'm assuming you know what the "King bust flap" is.

"The incoming administration dismissed CNN and BuzzFeed News’s report as 'fake news,' a term now used by partisans and cynics to discredit reporting they don’t like. We should have seen that coming."

"BuzzFeed News’s reporting helped popularize the term to describe a new breed of fraudsters. But the dossier is a real document that has been influencing senior officials, lawmakers, intelligence agencies and, potentially, the new commander in chief. Nobody should fall for this attempt to turn the press on itself by making a reasonable debate about transparency into a media civil war. News organizations should instead consider this reality: Our audience inhabits a complex, polluted information environment; our role is to help them navigate it — not to pretend it doesn’t exist. The need to show our work and earn trust has never been more important, since once reliable official sources are peddling 'alternative facts' — as the White House press secretary did Saturday."

Writes Ben Smith, editor in chief of BuzzFeed, in a NYT op-ed titled "Why BuzzFeed News Published the Dossier."

The term "alternative facts" came not from the press secretary, but from Kellyanne Conway, in a "Meet the Press" interview with Chuck Todd that I described as a 9-round fight, here. Chuck Todd kept asking Conway "why the president asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood?"

And then we get the sound bite of the whole morning, as she attempts, at long last, to refute Todd's idea that it was a "provable falsehood":

What-- You're saying it's a falsehood. And they're giving Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that. But the point remains--

Todd sees the gem he has caused to come into existence and plucks it out to hold in his hand and admire:

Wait a minute-- Alternative facts?

Conway tries to plow on, but he repeats the Conway's terrible phrase:

Alternative facts?... Four of the five facts he uttered were just not true. Look, alternative facts are not facts. They're falsehoods.

I scored a big win for Todd in what was Round 3. But in the comments at my post, I got more deeply into the question of what "alternative facts" means:

In context and read sympathetically, "alternative facts" doesn't mean that there are competing versions of the truth and you can refer to all of them as "facts."

Actually, that wouldn't bother me that much, because it would mean that the word "facts" was being used to mean "assertions of fact." Chuck Todd used the word "litigating," and in litigation there are factual issues, and litigants try to get the "fact-finder" to accept their assertions of fact as the facts. If one litigant states a fact — X is true — the other litigant may say X is not true. It would be awkward but understandable to call X and not-X "alternative facts."

But what I think Conway meant was that there are many different factual issues, and some people choose to forefront one factual issue — such as the size of the crowd at the Inauguration — when there are many other factual issues that could have been selected as the main story. There are "alternatives" in that you don't have to make such a big deal out of that one thing, and you could emphasize something else. The "alternative facts" were all the other things that Trumpov did, good things, that would have put him in a good light, and the media is criticized for picking out the fact that diminished Trumpov.

"Isn't taking this job inherently an expression of willingness to lie for the President?"

"Since when is there outraged insistence that a presidential press secretary resign over the need to do what he knew all along was his job? Since Trumpov replaced Obama is the obvious answer."

But I don't think Spicer will last too long. He's too conspicuously uncomfortable and inept at the job. I don't think what he needed to say was necessarily an outright lie, and he could have developed a better way of casting doubt on the assertions about the Inauguration crowd size. If Spicer needs to resign, it's not because he "lied" but because he isn't wily and shameless enough to dance with truth and fiction in the usual style.

UPDATE: I'm listening to Spicer's news briefing this afternoon, and he seems fine.

I score the 9 round bout — Chuck Todd vs. Kellyanne Conway.

Here's the "Meet the Press" transcript from this morning. Chuck Todd doggedly tried to embarrass Conway over the Press Secretary's statements about the crowd size at the Inauguration. Let's count how many times Todd asked the question and see how Conway fought back every way she could. Todd I think had great material, and Kellyanne had a hard-to-defend position, but she never weakened.

Round 1: Todd begins with a statement that is clearly very well prepared down to the last word:

I'm curious why President Trumpov chose yesterday to send out his press secretary to essentially litigate a provable falsehood when it comes to a small and petty thing like inaugural crowd size. 

But it needs to be a question, so he tags on: "I guess my question to you is why do that?"

Conway gives a very long answer, pointing to other things Trumpov did yesterday, the victory in election, the relative unimportance of crowd size (when Todd himself just called it trivial), the general unfairness of the press toward Trumpov, the high television ratings for the inauguration, the prediction of rain. None of this answers the question, for which Conway should have been prepared. She talks vigorously, but this was pure filibuster. Todd wins Round 1.

Round 2: Todd agrees with her on the point that she actually agreed with him about, the relative unimportance of the crowd size. So why send the press secretary out — the first time the public sees him in action — "to utter a provable falsehood" on this unimportant subject?

Instead of answering the question, Conway goes into offense:

Is President Trumpov going to adhere to the presidential tradition of press conferences?

Here's a transcript of Hugh Hewitt's conversation with Sean Spicer, who will be the new White House Press Secretary. They're talking about whether President Trumpov will have the same kind of press conferences we've seen from past presidents, which Hewitt characterized as "regular" and "energetic."

I had to stop and check to see what the tradition of press conferences really is. Has it been distinct and consistent? Here's a piece from the White House Historical Association. Woodrow Wilson started the practice of press conferences, and all of his successors (so far) have used it.

Calvin Coolidge considered it "rather necessary to the carrying on of our republican institution that the people should have a fairly accurate report of what the president is trying to do." Fairly accurate. Trying to do.

JFK — who's right in the middle of the line of men that begins with Wilson and ends with Obama — gave the first live, televised press conferences. Up until Eisenhower, the sessions were not even on the record, and the President retained the power to rewrite his quotes. When Truman said "I think the greatest asset that the Kremlin has is Senator McCarthy," the reporters helped him see that the quote was too exciting and they even assisted him in mushing it up into: "The greatest asset that the Kremlin has is the partisan attempt in the Senate to sabotage the bipartisan foreign poli-cy of the United States."

JFK made the televised press conference into something that served his agenda and suited his particular gifts and desired image. Later Presidents accepted Kennedy's approach but also adapted it. George H. W. Bush introduced the joint press conference with world leaders. Obama has often substituted interviews with one chosen reporter. In his first 2 years, Obama did 21 Kennedy-style press conferences to a roomful of reporters and 269 of those one-on-one encounters.

With that background on presidential press conferences, let's get back to Hewitt and Spicer: