Day: December 13, 2003

Winter Wonderland

Umm, okay, I need to come up with better titles for my posts, particularly today. But, I wanted something to cover some rather disparate topics – The White House and ice skating.

On tv this afternoon on ABC, it’s some International Challenge from Detroit, after last week’s ice skating competition in Paris. So far, the American men haven’t done so great (Timothy Goebbel fell a lot; Michael Weiss was rather lackluster). The women are up now and there are more falling (hmm). Dick Button is still a great commentary man and Peggy Fleming’s not so light on the critiquing either. Together, they make Terry Gannon a better play-by-play man – last week, he had Peter Carruthers as his partner, and yet Gannon did a lot of the criticizing himself (it seems he took a lot of lessons from Dick).

Last night’s Channel 11 (WPIX) news closed with a highlight of the White House’s website feature – a short movie on the Christmas adventure of Barney Bush, the Bushes’ little black Scottish terrier. Not that I’d really apologize, but I am a sucker of presidential pets. I still haven’t gotten over the weirdest photo from the 2000 campaign from Time magazine, where George W. Bush is spending quality time with his cat and yet the picture made it look like the cat was kind of trying to mawl Bush’s arm. Anyway, Barney’s the cutest dog and I had to check out the little movie. What Xmas fun!

Plot: Barney’s assigned to help decorate the White House for Christmas and Chief of Staff Andrew Card is demanding no antics until Christmas, when the job is done. Trying to humor the children, I suppose; I think we all know that the decorations aren’t attributed to the dog, no matter how smart the dog is. Pros: Barney is cute. Andrew Card is a better actor, being very convincing at the guy in charge of operations (which he is). General Counsel Alberto Gonzalez (and still referred as “Judge Gonzalez” because he was a judge in Texas) tries to hang a wreath with his… ceremonial gavel. (what? No one could have given him a hammer? Even he knows better than that!). Advisor Karl Rove also there – umm, I’ll reserve judgment on his appearance, but it was amusing. The best appearance was Ari Fleischer, former presidential press secretary. Fleischer’s playing cards with Barney and Card comes in and says, “Barney, go do your job. And, Ari Fleischer – what are you doing here? You don’t even work here anymore!” LOL. Ari Fleischer’s certainly looking less stressed out now that he’s not working at the White House; his Yankees baseball cap was a deft touch. Has the Texas bunch of the White House been giving him a ribbing that the Yankees’ Andy Pettitte has gone back home to Texas?

Fitting the winter/holiday theme – ABC’s rebroadcasting Charlie Brown Christmas tonight. Come on, get in touch with your childhood and watch it.