China Exhibits Very Bad Judgement in Whom to Intimidate
Don’t get me wrong. There’s absolutely no excuse for a country hosting the Olympic games to detain the press corps traveling with one of the visiting dignitaries.
A charter airplane carrying the White House press corps was detained for nearly three hours Friday at Beijing’s international airport not long after President Bush arrived to attend the Olympic Games.
The flight crew of the Northwest Airlines 747 had been expecting to park at a VIP terminal, but after landing was instead directed by the control tower to a normal international gate.
White House officials would say only there were "logistical problems" getting clearance to unload the aircraft. The flight crew was told the Chinese were insisting that all luggage be inspected.
Detaining the plane carrying the White House press corps makes China look like the still-authoritarian nation they denied they were (and are) when they first got the games.
And, no doubt, when they were "inspecting" all the baggage on the plane, I’m sure they snuck a few bugs in here and there among the electronics, just for good measure.
But really, China. Of all the journalists covering the games this year, do you really think the White House press corps are the journalists you ought to be intimidating? By habit, these journalists are among the most domesticated of western journalists, wiling to cow to authority to retain their spot on the plane (particularly since Helen’s out still sick). Both from a PR perspective–in that, before this happened, China was likely to get a good review from these journalists–and from a power perspective, I’d be a little more worried about the ESPN crew than the White House press corps.
Nevertheless–may all the journalists on board check their equipment carefully and have a safe rest of the trip.
I’m very tempted to observe that I’m shocked to hear that there is no honour among thieves … But I won’t.
Looks like the real games are happening off the field.
Bush probably asked them to detain press corps just to spite them (I am sure to show them some “tough love” for not being as adoring as they used to be).
Bush just didn’t want these guys hanging around.
Just wait until an athlete or a group of them runs afoul of the Chinese. Let them detain a couple of medalists, rough up some commentators…the world is watching. I think that worse than detaining the press corpse is yet to happen.
TPMMuckraker has the text of the 18 questions Sen. Grassley just sent Mucksy and Mueller. Interestingly pointed WTF style questions.
Absolutely right. As cowering as this group is, I can only imagine what task awaited the ground crew for cleaning up those seats if the plane was detained three hours before they could get off. There’s just not enough Depends in the world…
Thanks for mentioning Helen Thomas. She had a birthday this week and probably could use a few “cheering up” emails since she has been ill for several weeks. As far as I know, her address is still hthomas@hearstdc.com. She responded personally to many of us who wrote to thank her when she chastised the rest of the WH press corps for not going after the torture story a few months ago.
Here’s the link.
emptywheel:
The word you want, appropriately enough, is “kowtow to”, not “cow to”.
Xie xie ni.
The pleasant temporary detention, no doubt, was intended to make them all feel at home. Especially if the Chinese had read the 9th Circuit’s opinion in US v. Arnold, regarding the government’s “right” to seize and copy without probable cause travelers’ computer drives, PDA’s, telephones, portable digital players, pens, thumb drives, etc. The copying, too, would have been done quickly and accurately, since the Chinese manufacture many of the world’s tools for doing it.
The action is actually a minor protest, typically, elegantly and efficiently done, but indirectly. It reminds Mr. Bush that he will pay a price if he repeats the grossly hypocritical talking points he mumbled in Thailand about the “liberty and freedom” the Chinese deserve, but which he so assiduously curtails at home. And that he needn’t attend, as rumored, that Christian mass in a Beijing cellar as if he were some visiting Roman senator who had secretly replaced his god-emperor with the Christ.
It was a gentle if unmistakable reminder, as is the Chinese way, that the see-saw goes down as well as up, that China’s willingness to hold billions in a depreciating US currency, it’s willingness not to play too many games with oil and other global commodities, is dependent on receiving the outward respect and private tribute from those who needlessly or inescapably make themselves vulnerable.
It frees the Party’s leaders from delivering such necessary but distasteful messages themselves, allowing their own meetings over moutai, scorpions, cobra and duck to be so much more pleasant. It’s a subtlety so lacking in much of what Mr. Bush does that he might miss it. Others will not.
As for the press, they had better contact their banks and credit rating agencies that their identity has been compromise. They ought to tell their sources that they, too, have been compromised. They should get out that scoop they had notes for in the formerly “locked” portions of their hard drives, and tell their e-mail and phone lists that more than one government will now be listening in.
I’ll look for Maureen Dowd to write another column “from” “China” – detailing the misery of sitting on the tarmac – while actually curled up in her Georgetown house once lived in by Jack Kennedy.
Look on the bright side
The WH Press Corpse may now better understand the visceral side of autocracy rather than treat it as stagecraft conjured by filthy bloggers.
It’s a wake up call when the royal court realizes even 3 dark hours of powerlessness…
The difference between ESPN and the White House press corps and MSM is that ESPN doesn’t miss the major stories they should be covering and they aren’t taking dictation from Ed Gillespie and at various times in the past seven years between Karl Rove and Libby on how to cover, what to cover, and what to say.
Exposé of Peasants’ Plight Is Suppressed by China
Twisting Along China’s Sharp Curves
Chinese Lessons
Still no articles at WaPO on Suskind’s book and transcripts by Froomkin noticed:
Foot-Dragging to the Finish
The USOC has already kowtowed to the Chinese, by taking away the facemasks that the USOC had provided to the US team to protect them from the truly horrendous air pollution there.
I’d like to see the athletes decide that medals aren’t worth the real risk of health damage, and say ‘we’re going home now’.
Somehow, having the WH press Corps get a little comeuppance doesn’t really strike me as a bad thing. Maybe they could have used the three hours to recall what they were supposed to have learned in journalism school.
I think the Chinese did it to instill Stockholm Syndrome in them, as if they needed it.
Two other things I find somewhat interesting about this, but that have little to do with either China or the WHPC.
First, this happened on an NWA plane. NWA is famous, of course, for having people sit on the tarmac in Detroit for hours and hours and hours after a snowstorm in 1999.
Second, assuming the plane was staffed by an NWA crew, then as soon as they landed, the NWA crew was bound, by union rules, to stop serving people and take a break. (They’re only allowed 12 hour shifts that can stretch some, but DC to China would be a full shift. I learned this when I discovered I’d have to sleep on teh floor of the Nagoya airport when diverted there one night on account of a typhoon.) So I’m curious–did the flight attendants stop serving booze?
When our cowboy makes speeches like this:
A blatant spit in the eye of his hosts. This stuff should have been sorted out 12 years ago when the games were awarded, and even Bush has said that:
IMO the press were just pawns in the game of politics which the Chinese won IMO, because all the baggage and electronics are probably now bugged.
Given that we owe China as much money as we do, and that we literally HAVE to work with them, and they HAVE to work with us, this seems like the perfect power play. Who needs weapons of mass destruction when our economies are so intertwined. What great opportunity for a power play. It says to the world, you may be visiting our nations, but don’t forget that you will not change us fundamentally, and we will do things the way we want to. You are in China now. Intimidation is a big part of the game.
Froomkin reports:
An error? Or did Cheney decree that the earth be renamed?