The Media Fellating Thread
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After a four-year vacancy, the position of DOTUS was filled this week by Major and Champ Biden. When the two German shepherds entered the White House, they brought a great opportunity to dig into the day-to-day doggie logistics in one of the busiest and most powerful households in the world.
For instance, who fills the water dish, rubs the bellies and scoops the poop? Can the pups just pop into the Oval Office? And what if one ruins a rug or bites an ambassador?
Here are the answers along with a peek into the lives of first dogs.
Who actually lets the dogs out?
Many first families care for their dogs themselves, longtime White House chief usher Gary J. Walters said in an email. Walters oversaw the residence portion of the house through a slew of first canines, from Lucky Reagan in the 1980s through Barney and Miss Beazley Bush in the 2000s.
However, every family is different, and members of the residence staff are ready to step in to help out with as much or as little as the family would like.
Barbara and George H.W. Bush were do-it-yourselfers, and the president even bathed the dogs in the residence shower, said historian Jennifer Pickens, author of “Pets at the White House.” The Fords were similar.
Betty Ford told Pickens about a wee-hours potty run that went awry. The couple’s golden retriever, Liberty, was days from giving birth to nine puppies and needed to go outside, so she woke up the president at 3 a.m. by licking his face. He dutifully pulled on his bathrobe and slippers and took her out to the South Lawn to do her business.
Many, many, other hard-hitting questions are answered in this story.
Note: Former President's Trump's lack of dogs is not (explicitly) mentioned.
Nor is this:
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The British Heads of State have centuries of inbreeding behind them.
What's America's excuse?
I was only joking
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@ivorythumper said in The Media Fellating Thread:
Was that intended to be ironic?
Nope. I know plenty of Catholics, absolutely plenty, who think their righteousness exempts them from developing social graces. I don't understand why that is. Quite obviously it's unnecessary. How many rape victims have you browbeaten about having an abortion? I'm guessing none, ever.
@aqua-letifer It was that "Love thy neighbor" definitely includes how not to sound like a self-righteous assclown and navigate these issues politely." that struck me as ironic.
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I wonder if Disney will require kids to watch with an adult in the room.
Link to video -
I wonder if Disney will require kids to watch with an adult in the room.
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Note, this is not in the "opinion" or "style" section.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/14/joe-biden-jill-pda-468831
Historians and relationship experts agree: The first couple’s romantic gestures aren’t just genuine — they’re restorative.
“I think that the Bidens know that the affection they show for each other is serving as a healing agent,” said Dr. Douglas Brinkley, the Rice University professor and presidential historian.
“New presidents and first ladies have to be empathetic,” he explained, and the Bidens’ PDA is just one part of the first couple’s effort to fulfill that institutional imperative.
“When we watch [first couples] together, we don’t want to feel a tension in their marriage,” Brinkley said. “We don’t want to feel that they enjoy being separated from each other. One wants to believe that there’s some harmony and deep respect there.”
Casual displays of affection weren’t always so commonplace for first couples. According to Dr. Barbara Perry, director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, it was the sexual revolution of the 1960s that redefined standards for how all Americans — including commanders in chief — could interact with their spouses in public.
Since Bill and Hillary Clinton, the presidency has seen a series of first couples — George W. and Laura Bush, Barack and Michelle Obama, and Joe and Jill Biden — who demonstrate that American culture is “past all the taboos” that were formerly associated with PDA, Perry said.
The glaring exception is the previous first couple, Donald and Melania Trump, whose frigid public encounters interrupted what had otherwise been a natural integration of PDA into everyday presidential behavior.
In that sense, the Bidens’ displays of affection appear somewhat foreign after the last four years, even though they represent yet another return to the norms of past administrations that the new president repeatedly pledged to rehabilitate on the campaign trail.
“It’s comforting. It’s warm. It’s genuine,” Perry said. “And so if you layer the Covid issue, our divided country [and] the violence in our country upon the contrast with the Trumps, it just symbolizes everything.”
Good job, "Politico!" Just keep on keepin' on!
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I didn't see that it was the Bee.
Pretty damning indictment of our MSM that I entertained it as possible.
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The British Heads of State have centuries of inbreeding behind them.
What's America's excuse?
@doctor-phibes said in The Media Fellating Thread:
The British Heads of State have centuries of inbreeding behind them.
Do you really want to go there?
