"Taking Real Hardballs, Huh?"
BY Nancy Scola | Thursday, October 28 2010
The Nation's Ari Melber sends along a note noting that even though Robert Gibbs didn't actually take a question via Twitter during today's press briefing, the topic did come up. In fact, Gibbs used it as a chance to join the White House press corps in poking a little har-dee-har fun at the first very "#1q" question. Let's go to the transcript:
We’re just waiting for the Twitter question.
GIBBS: The Twitter question I believe was on India. It was why we’re going to India.Oh, you don’t do it here, you’ve already done it.
No, we did it up there. The video will be out very fairly shortly. [Video is here.]We thought you were going to show it out here. At least I did.
You should write in a question.What was the question?
What was the purpose of the trip to India? Why going to India?Taking real hardballs, huh? (Laughter.)
Well, since we did a whole hour-long briefing on it yesterday it seemed like we should take one hardball and give it to the rest of them. So, yes.
Of course, there's a chance that some Americans didn't get a chance to watch and parse yesterday's 63-minute press gaggle on next week's trip to India by President Obama. Gibbs' reaction lends weight to the idea that this whole question-via-Twitter business is more solidly seen as Gibbs playing his part in the Obama administration's work towards increasing citizen participation in the White House than it is some sort of challenge to the status quo of the White House briefing room's daily churn. One way to read the episode: the nature of his job has changed, even if he -- and the White House press corps -- doesn't seem to realized it yet.