“President Barack Obama wasn’t furloughed when the government shut down,” begins a lighthearted article at Yahoo! News, which might prompt a cynic to reply, “More’s the pity.”
But the article, drawing on “humorous” details provided principally by The New York Times, goes on to acknowledge that the White House is having a time of it getting along without the “non-essential” government workers who have been laid off.
[J]unior staff members who were furloughed had to explain to the more senior staff members how to do relatively basic tasks, including writing news releases, scheduling meetings and navigating visitors through security gates outside the Oval Office. Trash in the West Wing is now being picked up once per day instead of twice. [Ed. note: Too many jokes to fit in a single suggest themselves here, so feel free to have at it on your own.]
The Yahoo! writers note that the left-leaning newspaper Politico served up its own take (non-comedic, as far as I can divine) on how the shutdown is affecting the daily red-blooded goings-on inside the presidential mansion. “Place a call to White House press secretary Jay Carney these days,” the piece begins, “and it’ll lead to something surprising on the other end: Jay Carney.” A bigger surprise would be to place a call to Carney and come up with something other than a weazely, watered-down rehashing of the president’s blame game targeting Republicans.
The Times, in its article, notes:
Unpaid White House interns have also been sent home, unlike the last shutdowns in 1995 and early 1996, when they were permitted to keep working. (It was during the shutdown in 1995 that Monica Lewinsky found some time to be alone with President Bill Clinton down the hall from the Oval Office.)
Again, feel free to insert your own comment.
Needless to say, despite the president’s insistence that the Republicans alone hold the key that would unlock an end to the partial shutdown, he too has that power but refuses to negotiate.
