Should ESPN run newsbriefs? How else might Dubya be kept clued in on current

[AirAmFan]

events? Do you have any other helpful suggestions to help our national leadership respond more quickly to emergencies?

Many MSM outlets have reported that a staffer had to "burn a DVD of the news" for Dubya before he realized there was a national emergency in the Gulf region that needed his attention. What was Dubya doing that prevented him from knowing what most of the world knew about disaster in New Orleans?

On Tuesday evening's news, Brian Williams revealed what was likely preventing Dubya from becoming aware of what billions of other people in the world knew: he was watching ESPN!

"The President told me the last time I spent time with him that he does not watch the evening newscasts (an aide reminded him that a videotape compilation is brought to the residence each evening should he desire to watch) and prefers instead to watch ESPN or "any baseball game" on television, in season." (From http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9314188 )

This bit of news suggests a tongue-in-cheek White House press briefing question:

To shorten delays in Presidential response to national emergencies, should ESPN start running 20-second newsbriefs at the bottom of the hour? MTV and other entertainment stations often provide idiot-level news summaries. Why not ESPN? If taking a few minutes out of several hours of sports coverage for newsbriefs saved one life by cluing in a clueless leader, wouldn't most sports fans gladly put up with newsbriefs?

I wish someone would ask Dubya whether he'd appreciate this kind of help with his "hard work"! Preferably, after his big photo-op "address to the nation" tonight.

[Berry Cool]

1. ESPN should use their crawl at the bottom of the screen

at :28 and :58 after the hour as a news rather than a sports ticker. That way Dubya can keep up and not miss any baseball games.

Another possible alternative for ESPN is to hire Keith Olbermann back to do SportsCenter with Dan Patrick. While Dan provides the sports coverage, Keith can report the news. ("Mr. Bush...this just in...it appears that terrorists have invaded a Wal-Mart in Kansas...you might wanna DO SOMETHING SOON!")

[AirAmFan]

6. I like the idea of personal on-air "heads up" for *: would he even NOTICE

a news-ticker 'crawl' that had no photography and didn't appeal to him by name? "HEY STUPID!"

[Rude Horner]

2. I'm thinking that since he's such an avid reader

maybe we could work the news of the day into "Dick and Jane" books, with lots of pictures.

See Dick and Jane board up their house for hurricane Katrina. See the wind blow. Blow blow blow. See the rain rain. Rain rain rain. See the levee break. Break break break. See Dick and Jane climb out onto their roof. Roof roof roof. See the water rise. Rise rise rise. See the dead bodies float by.

[cynatnite]

3. Run it during 'Blue's Clues'

Laura probably demoted him after the pretzel incident.

[philarq]

4. NO Obliterated, but first the 1977 Superbowl repeat

[MidnightWind]

5. Good ideas all!

:applause:

[AirAmFan]

15. Thanks. Let's think up more and more ways to LAUGH the Rethugs out of the WH!

[VolcanoJen]

7. We could have the CIA edit current news into the video...

... of the old Texas Rangers games he seems to enjoy watching so much. Clearly they could splice something together, hook something up, for the good of a nation.

How odd. I'm a baseball fan and can't get enough of it, but I woudln't spend hours watching a years-old game of which the outcome was known (except for maybe World Series games, but we're talking about the Rangers).

And I'm no President.

[AirAmFan]

8. I've never watched much ESPN. Is it mostly years-old archived footage?

I knew a 24-hour sports channel couldn't be completely "live".

[ProfessorGAC]

9. There's LOTS Of Live Stuff

And they run basically a sports news desk show about 6 times a day that gives highlights of the prior days events and related stories.

In the wee hours, they replay games from the day before. Old archival games are shown on ESPN Classic, not on ESPN or ESPN2.
The Professor

[AirAmFan]

10. Thanks for the quick response. Do the commentators ever mention Dubya

as a regular viewer, who's probably watching at any given moment?

Ordinarily, a cable channel's marketing people would do something big with the fact that the White House is addicted to their shows. But the politics of playing up Duba's ESPN jones right now might not fit the agenda of the (presumably Republican) ownership.

This is material for Saturday Night Live! Dubya is such a joke! I wonder how many unintentional laugh lines there'll be in his big photo-op "address" tonight.

[ProfessorGAC]

11. Not Really

And they do an awful lot of treacly "salute the troops" stuff. Now, ESPN radio is different. There are guys on there who regularly criticize and ridicule Bush. I bet a week hasn't gone by in 3 years where i didn't hear someone say something something critical of policy or ridicule somethign Silverspoon said.

Now, if you really want to hear that go on in sport radio, you would need to listen to Chicago's WSCR, which streams live. (TheScore670.com, i think.) The afternoon guys on that show LOATHE Silverspoon and probably don't go 20 minutes without taking some shot, subtle or overt.

The Professor

[AirAmFan]

12. Words we're unlikely to hear from Dubya tonight: 'ESPN', 'DVD', 'out of touch',

'accountability', 'the buck stops here'...

[Land Shark]

13. OHMAN!! We know he don't read, they want us to believe NO TV too???

See my prior discussion, Laura talks about their TV watching habits.

<http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4760020>

This whole idea of no tv except espn is just a fake alibi, as if that could possibly explain the president's inaction when the rest of the administration admittedly does, even if they try to fudge on the president's watching habits...

Moreover, it's like sentry duty. Falling asleep at the post and not seeing the attack is NOT A DEFENSE

[AirAmFan]

14. Megalomaniacs don't like feedback. They want to impose their OWN reality

on everybody else, not keep informed about what other people think is important.

How else could Dubya keep insisting on dismantlement of Social Security, permanent repeal of the "death tax", or any of the rest of his priorities?

IMO, he's out of touch because he WANTS to be out of touch. And the best way to expose his absolutely insufferable arrogance is by turning what HE SAYS about it into humor. IMO it's prretty fruitless to try to get at "the truth" of Dubya's TV-watching habits. But that truth is not our objective: getting our country back is what most of us want.

Remember how Poppy Bush was lampooned for fascination with supermarket barcode technology in 1992? Most Americans had become familiar with that technology up to a full decade earlier. What, had Poppy spent ten years in a bubble with shifts of personal servants, so he'd never even had to go shopping? Poppy was LAUGHED out of the White House. Like father, like son, I hope.

[BlackVelvetElvis]

16. What kind of leadership do we have

Where the president has to have DVD's made of something that ran several times within a 24 period hour on a national news network? Can't he knuckledrag himself to push a remote control button once in a while? Is the remote control too "common" for him or is he just ignorant. If it's the latter, I pity our country.
I suppose he has someone on the payroll who pops the popcorn for him too.