Laughing at Ari Fleischer
Ovid, over at use.perl.org, made a cool journal entry today, in which he pointed to a couple of places (like the White House site, which has a transcript, and C-SPAN’s site, with RealAudio video) where you can catch White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer’s briefing from yesterday. And the fun part is, at the very end of the briefing, one of the reporters pesters Fleischer about a report that the U.S. is offering to use trade incentives to bribe Mexico (among others) into voting our way on the U.N. Security Council. Fleischer responds, “But think about the implications of what you’re saying. You’re saying that the leaders of other nations are buyable. And that is not an acceptable proposition.” And the entire room of reporters bursts out laughing. Fleischer gives a curt, “thank you” and leaves the podium, and as the reporters are getting up you can hear one of them joking with another, “Laughed off the stage!” At least you can on the RealAudio clip; the transcript doesn’t include that, but interestingly enough, it does include the “(Laughter)”. Poor Ari.
