>>>>I agree with the conservative bloggers on this one. What Plante did was just plain rude. Any President deserves a certain amount of respect even if one disagrees with his policies. (Or her policies, as the case may be <g>).
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>>>Disagree. What's rude is calling a press conference where nobody is allowed to ask questions. We have the same sort of rudeness up here. Our PM Harper likes to do things in secret so reporters can't ask questions, and if there are going to be reporters, he wants questions vetted beforehand. Now that's rude. If the politicians create a situation where a reporter has to shout out a question to make the point that the press has that right, then they get what they deserve.
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>>Now if only the reporters (females included) could only find their spherical jewelry, and just start asking questions, and if interrupted, all walk out on the "conference". If they aren't allowed to press, they aren't the press.
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>With a few exceptions, our 'free press' quit being free about 7 years ago. If you don't ask the 'right' questions, you won't be allowed to play.

Do you remember seeing Bush do a press conference where the questions were submitted BEFORE the press conference? He had reviewed all the questions (well, I'm sure he had someone that could read do it for him) and had all the answers prepaired ahead of time (again, sure he had someone answer them for him too), so when he did the press conference, he'd just call a reporters name out, they'd ask their question (that they'd submitted) - then he'd respond with his prepaired answer. It was one of the most ridicilious things I'd ever seen.