A Finger of Hostility?

The latest in the "Summer of Scandals"--

Did President Bush flip off the press on Wednesday? Did he show them a "finger of hostility"?

From AMERICAblog--


Watch the video here.

Scott McClellan addressed this pressing issue in yesterday's briefing at the White House.
Transcript

Q Scott, last night on the Tonight Show, Jay Leno, who apparently is subbing for Johnnie, displayed a video of the President at the Capitol yesterday. In that video, the President walking away from the press lifts his hand and raises a finger. Mr. Leno interpreted it as, shall we say, a finger of hostility. Each of our fingers has a special purpose and meaning in life. (Laughter.) Can you tell us what finger it was he held up?

MR. McCLELLAN: Ken, I'm not even going to dignify that with much of a response. But if someone is misportraying something, that's unfortunate.

Q Well, it was not a finger of hostility? ("Finger of hostility" cracks me up.)
MR. McCLELLAN: Ken, I was there with him, and I'm just not going to -- I'm not going to dignify that with a response. I mean, I haven't seen the video that you're talking about, but I know the way the President acts. And if someone is misportraying it, that's unfortunate.

In spite of White House efforts to play down the magnitude of this scandal, it just won't go away. In the tradition of Woodward and Bernstein, Peter Baker tries to get to the bottom of Fingergate. He writes his findings in a Washington Post piece today.
Did President Bush show what he really thinks of the media with a flip of his middle finger? Jay Leno thinks so.

On "The Tonight Show" Wednesday, the late-night comic showed videotape of the president leaving a meeting with congressional Republicans on Capitol Hill earlier in the day and passing by a clutch of reporters shouting questions on the fate of the Central American trade pact. On the video, Bush striding away from the camera suddenly thrusts his right hand into the air and extends a finger -- precisely which one was unclear. White House officials yesterday said it was his thumb.

But there were other interpretations. "I think President Bush is getting a little fed up with the press," Leno said, and he then showed the video to much laughter from the studio audience, which seemed to see it the same way. "What was that all about, huh?" Leno asked. "You see? That's the great thing about the second term: Who cares?"

Certainly Bush does not always have charitable thoughts about journalists, and the video clip quickly made its way onto various Web sites. It was played around Washington yesterday as the curious tried to discern for themselves which presidential digit was raised. The speculation recalled last year's still-unresolved controversy over a hump that seemed to be under Bush's suit coat at one of the campaign debates.

...[I]t would not be the first time someone from the administration offered raw commentary on Capitol Hill. When Vice President Cheney ran into one of his leading Democratic critics, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), on the Senate floor one day last year, words were exchanged and the normally mild-mannered veep snapped, "[Expletive] yourself."

Still, none of the journalists on the scene Wednesday reported seeing Bush make a rude gesture. Ken Herman, the Cox News Service correspondent representing other print reporters at the time, did not mention it in his pool report and said by telephone yesterday that he did not see the moment in question. "I think the video is inconclusive but leaning toward thumb," he said after examining the footage. "It's just hard to imagine."

The MSM's anti-Bush administration template is once again exposed.

Baker uses the Wednesday incident to rehash the "still unresolved" Humpgate scandal and the "[Expletive] yourself"-gate scandal. His delight in waltzing down memory lane is clear.

To him and his comrades, it's obvious that the Bush administration is staffed by a bunch of corrupt, lying, ill-mannered, downright evil people.

I think the video and still photos are inconclusive.

In the final analysis, I don't think the issue really is whether Bush did or did not flip off the press.

I think the issue is that the liberal media deserve to be flipped off.

I salute them often.