(AP) President George W. Bush selected the slogan today that will define his presidency. Said Bush, "Some of our greatest leaders and their administration have been defined by a single phrase or slogan. Some of my favorites are "The New Deal," "Happy Days are here again," and "Stay the course" (that last one was my Dad's).
Bush had considered using a shortened version of the saying ("Don't ask, don't tell) but assumed that everyone would identify this with gays and the military. "I didn't want people to think of some lesbo in a tank or some G.I. with pink panties under his BDU's when they thought of my slogan. I wanted them to picture the forward thinking and progress that have defined my administration."
Other ideas that were consided by the President and his staff were "We're mad and we're bigger than you," "You have a friend in Halliburton" (Cheney's idea), "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," and "1000 Points of Light Jr."
Bush intends to end all of his press conferences from now on with his new catch phrase and will stop accepting non-approved, non-scripted questions. As a result, ABC, NBC, CBS, CBC, the BBC, AP, UPI, USA Today, The New York Times, CNN, Reuters, and all other major world newspapers have decided to stop sending reporters to cover his press conferences. In the words of 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace, they would be "worthless. Why attend a dog and pony show? He would just be disseminating more sugar coated lies as pablum for the masses."
Fox News will, of course, continue sending representatives and is agreeable to submitting questions beforehand and accepting scripted questions. In a prepared statement, the network said that "we intend to continue our long-standing tradition of hard hitting, non-biased, investigative journalism by telling you the truth and facts that a Republican White House thinks you need to hear."
In the press conference that Bush gave when he announced this new policy, several reporters from several news bureaus shouted out questions such as "which lies have to you told us?" Others asked of he had lied about the weapons of mass destruction. To these and other questions from unrecognized reporters, he said. "I'm sorry, that wasn't scripted."
Requests by this on-line magazine for an exclusive interview received the following reply from the White House Press Secretary. "The President is willing to grant interviews to reporters from your magazine as long as they do not answer any questions." We asked them how it was possible to conduct an interview without asking questions and were told that "you are the journalists, you figure it out."
