Why Have the Media Never Been Asked to Answer for this Behavior?

On the evening of March 24, 2004, one year into the war in Iraq, Bush arrived at the Washington Hilton to attend the Radio and Television Correspondents Association Dinner, an annual black-tie event, at which the custom holds for current presidents to roast the press and throw in a few jokes about themselves as well.

During the dinner, a slide-show called the “White House Election-Year Album” was projected on a screen behind his dais. The photos showed Bush in the White House looking behind drapes and searching under the furniture, making comments such as, “Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be here somewhere! Nope, no weapons over there! Maybe under here?” The audience howled with laughter.¹ Far more disgusting was that Bush’s heartless slide-show was preceded by the widow of David Bloom, a reporter who was killed in Iraq, who cried while she gave a speech.²

At the time the dinner took place, over 600 members of the American military had been killed in Iraq, sent there for bogus reasons, including the non-existent WMDs. And George Bush was poking fun at the fact that he could not find them! He and the assembled group was laughing at this. How did they find this to be so funny? Is the war just a game to them? If I had been there, I would have stood up and walked out, my job be damned.

1. Paul Farhi, “Democrats Call Bush’s Comedy Skit Tasteless,” Washington Post, March 26, 2004; Eric Boehlert, Lapdogs, How the Press Rolled Over for Bush, New York: Free Press, 2006.

2. Sidney Blumenthal, How Bush Rules, Chronicles of a Radical Regime, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006, p. 48.