December 23, 2005

"You were a warrior in the war on terrier."

Said by Andrea Mitchell, hosting "Hardball" last night, to her other guest just after tangling with Judge Richard Posner, who was on the show, by telephone, to talk about the Bush administration's warrantless interception of telephone calls. It's quite surprising, by the way, to find a federal judge going on a TV news analysis show to talk about a legal issue. I note that he did not take a position, but tried to explain the arguments.

He had to keep saying things like "I said it's arguable" as Mitchell kept trying to pin him down before moving back to the other guest. Posner, though he was on the phone, was very forceful in denying Mitchell the ability to use the host's standard strategy of capsulizing the guest's position in order to move a two-sided debate forward. Mitchell must have felt the need to be more tolerant toward Posner than to the usual guest, but she obviously needed to give some time to her other guest. She kept a smile on her face as she tried to make the requisite move, but then she said, "You were a warrior in the war on terrier."

10 comments:

XWL said...

Hey that 'War on Terriers' is no laughing matter someplaces.

(and as someone who has grown up around pitbulls and pitbull mixes, bad owners make bad dogs (the sweetest dog I've been around was a pitbull, but some of the nastiest dogs of other people have also been pitbulls), it's not the breed, but pitbulls are capabable of doing greater harm than other breeds due to their breeding)

Meade said...

I'm with you, XWL. Irresponsible dog owners need to be put on some sort of terror watch list.

Richard Lawrence Cohen said...

It may be a reference to Les Barker's comedy CD, THE WAR ON TERRIER.

erp said...

Dare we hope that Mr. and Mrs. Greenspan will retire to their villa in Havana on February first?

knox said...

LOLOLOLOL! Arf!

Ron said...

Oh when will the members of the Shetland Liberation Front be freed from the little portable Gitmos they are forced to endure just to go on airplanes?

Goatwhacker said...

Hey, quit hounding Andrea.

Anonymous said...

I've taken Andrea's present day explanation that she doesn't know why she said in 2003 that it was common knowledge among the press corp that Valarie Plame worked for the CIA as laughably insincere. Maybe I should reconsider. Maybe she is that daff.

D.E. Cloutier said...

Anything is better on "Hardball" than Chris Matthews, who turned bad manners into a profession.

D.E. Cloutier said...

jvgordon: "Isn't this some kind of coded threat against Barney and Mrs. Beasley, the Bush terriers?"

My Scottish Terrier goes to Barney's and Mrs. Beasley's groomer. I'll send a note.