Each week, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino seems to claim a new “personal best” in unintended irony. Today, however, she set a new world record. (One can almost hear the partisan fans chanting, “USA! USA! USA!”)
Here is a verbatim exchange from this afternoon’s press conference, in which Ms. Perino answered questions concerning the “state of emergency” declared by Pakistani dictator, Pervez Musharraf, to crack down on his political opponents:
QUESTION: Is it ever reasonable to restrict constitutional freedoms in the name of fighting terrorism?
MS. PERINO: In our opinion, no.
In Ms. Perino’s defense, she may have dispensed with the concluding caveat, “…unless we do it,” because she thought it so obvious as to be hardly worth mentioning.
Or maybe she just never noticed how her boss has rearranged the constitutional furniture since 9/11. After all, her habeas corpus rights have not been suspended, her telephone calls have not been intercepted without a warrant, her library-book borrowing records have not been inspected by FBI agents, she was never tried for a crime by a military tribunal without access to the evidence against her, and she was never denied access to government documents withheld on dubious claims of national security.
When you are as busy as the White House Press Secretary must be, who has time to see what’s going on?
We are used to hearing less-than-the-truth from Mr. Bush’s spokes-people. As with her predecessors – the heinously disreputable Ari Fleischer, propaganda automaton Scott McClellan, and grinning liar Tony Snow – the crap Ms. Perino spews is recited from the White House’s meticulous disinformation script. With the guys before her, one at least had the sense that they understood what they were dissembling about. With Ms. Perino, one gets the distinct feeling that she rarely has a clue.
It’s not dishonesty if you are too stupid to tell truth from falsity, right?
memestream 
Hey Mark,
Love your comments on Dana Perino. It has always pained me to listen to her, almost as much as listening to Bush. The two of them sound like they are out of the same womb.
Cheers,
Lisa
Dumb comments on a dumb blog. I thought you elitist liberals were supposed to be higher than hate. Oh well, three cheers for Democrat hypocrisy. Wallow in it.
Sure, my blog is substantially less brainy than, say, Plato’s Republic. But “Dumb”? Ouch!
John is completely mistaken about elitist liberals. We are allowed to hate, just the same as anyone else. (We are nothing if not egalitarian.) The difference between us and right-wing hate-mongers is that we make an effort to internalize the uglier side of our visceral displeasures and express our aggressive feelings in reasoned argument rather than pure invective.
Take this post about Ms. Perino, for example. Where, dear John, is the hatred? Hint: there is none because I don’t happen to hate Ms. Perino. I simply believe that she is foolish in the role of White House Press Secretary, as explained in careful, if provocative detail.
Cheers,
MBJ
MBJ:
Dana Perino continues her reign of error at Fox News’s administration in exile, according to Media Matters. It appears that she also claimed that “[w]e did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term.”
What I want to know is where can we get whatever magic dust it is they use? How can they get away with lie on top of calumny, all heavily slathered with disinformation while making those who speak the truth look like the fibbers? And they manage it when they are in power as well as out.
It’s not fair!
-s