Press Secretary Dana Perino chimed in with “It’s not a practice that we would employ here at the White House.” I bet she would and so would her boss, for that matter, if they thought they could get away with it. Imagine the bliss of not having to put up with the arrogance and foolishness of Helen Thomas and the other egotistical blowhards representing the Fourth Estate.
FEMA’s deputy director, Harvey Johnson, who fielded the questions at the press-less press conference, was also rebuked because he gave no indication at the time that his fellow staff members were asking the questions. Well, duh, what fun would it have been if he had? You might as well chide Lewis Carroll for not announcing in his opening chapter that caterpillars, rabbits and walruses, do not actually speak English.
All of this reminds me that in a recent survey, 66% of the respondents admitted that although they had never seen a UFO, 87% of them were convinced that intelligent life existed elsewhere in the universe. But I know a trick question when I see one. If they meant more intelligent life than one is likely to encounter in, say, Washington, D.C., they should have come right out and said so. In which case, I would imagine the response would have been 100%.