You'll recall that your blogstress's dear White Dragon (yes, dragons can be dear), provided AddieStan with a link to a remarkable clip (which has mysteriously disappeared from its Web location) of the president of the United States before an audience of women, discussing the problem of those pesky frivilous law suits that prevent ob/gyns from "practicing their love".
Here's the president's riff, lifted from the transcript of Keith Olbermann's September 6th "Countdown" show on MSNBC:
OLBERMANN: And one last political item in our No. 3 story. We mentioned last week that President Bush struck an odd tone in his acceptance speech by referencing the plight of doctors, specifically, OB-GYNs, who had to give up their practices due to legal and insurance costs. Not that it wasn‘t a valid point necessarily, just that it rang so oddly in a president‘s acceptance of his renomination, making the world safe for gynecology.
Well, tonight at a campaign stop in Poplar Bluffs, Missouri, Mr. Bush brought up the same topic and it rang odder still.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Too many good docs are getting out of business.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
BUSH: Too many OB-GYNs aren‘t able to practice their love with women all across this country. [Emphasis added by blogstress.]
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(LAUGHTER)
OLBERMANN: All righty then. As Adlai Stevenson once told a similar audience, these rights are being circumcised—circumscribed.
Your Webwench had wondered aloud in private why this delightful bit of presidential turpitude has not gotten more, ahem, play--to which the Dragon replied, breathing fire:
No surprise that as shockingly "compassionately conservative" as the Bushism clip was, it didn't receive [much] air play. Money talks and W's campaign is keeping the lights on at many media outlets. I guess it's bad luck for a station to piss off a paying customer, so mum's the word.
The press ain't free--pay up or shut up (or in this case get paid to shut up).
To clarify the part about keeping the lights on: though the actual Bush advertising budget may not be doing as much for the media coffers as, say, Procter & Gamble, our Dragon does have a point when one considers that big media's very best friend is a guy named Michael Powell, Bush's chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). (Jeez, think that's why his dad, late of the yellow cake theory, still has a job?)
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