President Bush Proclaims National Day of No News (19)

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President Bush, according to White House sources, ( staff members planning to write insider books) “has had it up to his eyeballs with the news media”.

After recently stunning the nation’s Capital by taking a day off to play with his dog, Barney, the President said today he was setting aside next Tuesday as a National Day of No News.

Official Washington Insiders (leakers) and the Press (leakees) were both agog over the statement as they live on the latest rumors, gossip, and downright whoppers that pass for news coverage in the nation’s Capital. Reporters and their sources fell over one another in their panic to get one last story out before next Tuesday.

One reporter who was overrun in the pressroom—she still had marks on her forehead caused by wing-tip shoes--said, “It was like the last flight out of Saigon”. Some younger reporters didn’t understand the reference to Viet Nam until it was explained that the war had been rerun during the 2004 Election (“Oh, The Swift Boat thing” they said.)

The President was asked about the rights of a free press. “The Press is pretty darned free with their coverage. I just want to give the American people a break from all those cable news birds that think they know everything”.

The Washington Press Corps took the proclamation —as they do all news coming out of their hometown—very seriously. And Congress, after giving a heads up to their reporter friends, held their own press conferences to denounce The National No News Day as Unconstitutional, not to mention harmful to their fund raising campaigns.

One Very Important Senator (one of 100) explained, “Besides, if you’re not on TV, you won’t be invited to the right parties".

The Press was represented by all the major news organizations except the Washington Post staff, which was attending a seminar led by Bob Woodward on “How To Keep Yourself Out of the Story”.

C-Span will have cameras turned on to capture every moment of the No News Day. Brian Lamb, C-Span founder, said it would not be a problem as they were used to dead air from their non-stop coverage of The House and Senate.