WTF Is It Now?!?

Bunnypants' African adventure
From the NY Times:

President Bush swept through Africa, a continent of wonders and history and heartbreak and promise, with the same brisk, businesslike efficiency he brings to all his activities.

When he visited the Slave House on Gorée Island in Senegal, said to have been the holding pen and departure place for as many as a million slaves being shipped across the Atlantic Ocean, he was in and out in 15 minutes.

"Very emotional, very touching," Mr. Bush said as he headed off the island. {...snip....}

This is a White House that plans every trip down to the last detail and plots out every camera angle to make sure that Mr. Bush is always shown in the most presidential and flattering pose possible. So the horror of the White House advance team can only be imagined when Mr. Bush, Laura Bush and one of their twin daughters, Barbara, cameras trained on them as always, pulled up on a dusty drive in the game park in Botswana and encountered a male elephant determinedly but ultimately unsuccessfully trying to mate with a female. {...snip....}

Mr. Bush almost never holds formal news conferences. Instead, he frequently takes a few questions from reporters, especially after meetings with foreign leaders. He has a strict rule: he calls on two American reporters and his counterpart calls on two reporters from the other country's press corps.

Mr. Bush is a stickler about the practice, even if it means chiding another leader on his own turf. When President Festus G. Mogae of Botswana tried to start one of these sessions on Thursday by saying, "Does anyone want to ask . . ." Mr. Bush cut him off good-naturedly and said, "That's not the way we do it."

Mr. Bush's two-question rule variously annoys and infuriates White House reporters, who have started to rebel. On Wednesday, when Mr. Bush and Mr. Mbeki held their "media availability" on the lush lawn of the presidential complex in Pretoria, many of the reporters on the trip chose not to attend, figuring they would not get a chance to ask a question anyway.


Statesman, leader.