Friends, today we have war in Europe for the first time in 70-ish years. Today, the three police officers who helped Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd were found guilty of violating Floyd's civil rights, and could face life in prison. Today, in COVID-19 news, the average daily number of cases over seven days has dropped 37% from the previous seven days.
These are all things good reporters could have discussed with Press Secretary Jen Psaki.
One reporter, though, decided to go with this:
"I have another question for you. So this was happening while you are at the podium. I'm not trying to ambush you, but I wanted to give you a chance to respond. Senator Ted Cruz is speaking, and you came up. He called you 'Peppermint Patty,' and has encouraged people to boo you."
Psaki looked genuinely amused, and answered, wryly, "Don’t tell him I like Peppermint Patty. I won’t take it too offensively. Sen. Cruz, I like Peppermint Patty. I am a little bit tougher than that, but there you go."
I could go on and on about what a persistently stubborn skidmark Ted Cruz is on the raggedy pair of old, stretched out yellowed tighty-whities that is Texas GOP politics. But none of that is nothing new. He gets up on the stage at CPAC every year and calls people names he thinks are insults, but really aren't, and he begs for applause (or boos) and it's cringeworthy and f*cking asinine. Typical Republican behavior.
I could spend a paragraph or two swooning over Psaki's appropriately dismissive, yet still adorably endearing response to both this absurd tidbit, and that she was asked about it.
But for this alleged reporter, who has access to the White House press shop to bring that up to Psaki? TODAY?
Is this kindergarten? Is she telling on Cruz, hoping to get a cookie? Is she trying to get points with Psaki? Is she being the mean girl, trying to start a fight? What on god's green earth motivates a grown human being to behave this way? Is there any journalistic value in this question whatsoever???
People are dying in Ukraine. In front of TV cameras, Putin's thugs arrested close to 2000 Russian citizens who were protesting his war crimes. How was Ted Cruz and his cringe-worthy, schoolyard-bully taunts about Jen Psaki entitled to take up any oxygen in the room at all?
