Today's Gaggle: TV Eye
Scotty McClellan is going out, as he came in, dealing with tough questions from our top-notch press corps. From today's gaggle:
QIt's come to my attention that there's been requests -- this is a serious question -- to turn these TVs onto a station other than Fox, and that those have been denied. My question would be, is there a White House policy that all government TVs have to be tuned to Fox?
MR. McCLELLAN: Never heard of any such thing. My TVs are on four different channels at all times.
QBecause you have four different TVs. But every time I've ever been --
MR. McCLELLAN: Every TV in the White House also has channels every -- has a split screen, where they can --
QWell, they always seem to be tuned to Fox, and there's been requests, and these are paid for by taxpayer dollars.
[...]
MR. McCLELLAN: [...]I've never known anyone that's raised a complaint about a request from back here to watch a different channel.
QI'm officially raising it and officially complaining about it.
MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I'm going to go see if we can change the channel for you. Have you called up?
QI was the Fox victim, and I was told -- the quote was, "No," when I asked for CNN.
MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know who you talked to, so -- it didn't come to my attention. You don't know who you talked to either?
QWell, the magic people at the other end off the phone.
MR. McCLELLAN: The magic people at the other end of the phone. Well, I'll see if this cabin is --
QI was told, "We don't watch CNN here, you can only watch Fox."
From Hotline, who note that the Q is almost certainly Jim VandeHei, and ask if this spells trouble for Tony Snow.
But Jim, you really can't expect this complaint to accomplish anything. You know they're just putting on the TVs whatever will bug the press corps the most. If they could get away with it, it'd be nothing but footage of Three Doors Down's performance at the "America's Future Rocks" concert on loop. Or, you know, this .
Not a Good Sign For Snow [Hotline]