This article was originally published on Examiner.com on June 16, 2012.
President Obama read a prepared statement Thursday, June 15th in The White House rose gardenregarding his immigration policy shift that will attempt to craft for young people with citizenship problems a path to becoming an American. As a matter of decorum and respect, questions by reporters who are given the privilege to attend are kept silent until the president is finished speaking.
However ‘journalist’ Neil Munro decided to break with tradition and disrespectfully shouted at the president with all of the class and dignity of a toddler during his remarks.
Munro bellowed, “Why’d you favour foreigners over Americans?”
President Obama responded with, “Excuse me, sir. It’s not time for questions, sir.”
Munro defiantly, as if to dictate the president’s job to him said, “No, you have to take questions.”
The president coolly responded with, “Not while I’m speaking.”
He then went on to finish his speech. Mr. Munro’s tact gives the impression that he was personally elected by an overwhelming majority that included 10s of millions of Americans. His behavior was appalling. You can watch the interaction on the video on the left side of this article.
This interaction has caused an uproar across the country with many crying foul and pointing to this incident as a crystallized example of all that is wrong with the discourse of our political discussions.
In a ridiculous twist while considering the context of this story, it turns out that Munro isn’t a natural born United States citizen and actually holds a green card that allows him to work in The United States while maintaining his citizenship in Ireland. How does one critique the immigration policies of a country, while shamelessly benefiting from those very policies?
Munro says that this entire controversy is blown out of proportion, and that he was only doing his job and questions the professionalism of those who have critiqued his latest public display.
Munro’s publisher, Tucker Carlson, the Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Caller, defended Munro him with thefollowing ironic statement:
“I don’t remember Diane Sawyer scolding her colleague Sam Donaldson for heckling President Reagan. And she shouldn’t have. A reporter’s job is to ask questions and get answers. Our job is to find out what the federal government is up to. Politicians often don’t want to tell us. A good reporter gets the story. We’re proud of Neil Munro.”
Carlson’s trip down memory lane in an attempt to cover up for his employee’s absolutely poor showing of manners is odd. He inadvertently shows, by his own example, that there are very few instances to prove his point that this is a normal occurrence that should be encouraged. As a point of fact he used a scenario that happened over 30 years ago. He lacked the ability to find anything more recent likely because the last time this happened it was from another Republican, Joe Wilson, who, to his everlasting shame, shouted “You lie!”at President Obama during the 2010 State of the Union.
A man like Neil Munro who is unable to follow basic decorum and show common respect to the office of the President of the United States should not be lecturing others about professionalism. That hypocrisy is only compounded by his own citizenship situation and only further goes to show the deep and dark hypocrisy that is constantly found to be lurking just below the surface.