History is not a strong point of this Administration. Last month it was President Obama declaring another “sputnik moment” for America–only to rattle off a list of big government ideas completely at odds with how Eisenhower responded to Sputnik. Yesterday, it was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs delivering another dose of “say what?” history. What’s been happening in Egypt over the last week or so, he informed the press, “are events that many people have not seen — nobody has seen in their lifetime.” Gibbs was born in 1971. …
President Barack Obama and his team have been resting on the strength of their social media efforts in the 2008 election for some time now. While they have been doing so, the world of digital media has passed them by, creating venues for political mobilization, policy debate and checks and balances unseen in any previous administration. In short, the right has overtaken the digital space in response to a largely secretive and out-of-control White House. But Robert Gibbs has a new spin on the White House’s social media efforts. In …
In today’s media environment, it makes sense that President Obama and his team of White House advisors are using Twitter to spread their message. The medium has a great deal of upside, especially to an administration that often accuses the press of treating them unfairly. However, Twitter also has a downside, because its impulsive nature can often lead to negative results. Today, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs used his official government Twitter account to endorse his favorite bike store. Gibbs tweeted: “#FF @CraigFEMA so you know the latest @RevCycles …
I wrote back in June about the shameful silence of the Obama administration during the mass street protests that greeted Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s fraudulent re-election victory as President of Iran. As White House spokesman Robert Gibbs ludicrously put it, the administration was “impressed by the vigorous debate and enthusiasm this election generated.” Or in Vice President Joe Biden’s words on NBC’s Meet the Press, describing Ahmadinejad’s victory – “we’re going to withhold comment… I mean we’re just waiting to see.” Embarrassingly for Washington, even many European leaders showed more backbone in …
When asked about ClimateGate, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed its importance, emphasizing that “climate change is happening.” Of course climate change is happening. Soon we’ll be calling press conferences to declare, “The earth is moving” or “It’s going to get dark tonight.” The reality is the climate has been changing ever since there was a climate, and part of that change was a cooling period as recent as the 1940s to the 1970s giving rise to fears of a coming ice age. When Gibbs spouts this rhetoric, he’s …
In 1953, the German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote of the Soviet suppression of a spring uprising in Berlin, Would it not be easier, In that case for the government, To dissolve the people And elect another? Why quote a communist bootlicker and Stalin hagiographer best known for socialist realism, whatever that means? Because in that single moment of apparent weakness, he seems to have captured how government apparatchiks must think when caught in the headlights of popular discontent. And yes, of course, the image of White House Press Secretary Robert …
