Adding Insult to Expulsion

President Bush's cheeky, newsless visit to the White House briefing room yesterday was an appropriate sendoff for a press corps that has been unable to get much if any advantage from its physical proximity to Bush's inner sanctum.

Reporters, who for decades have occupied a decrepit warren of cubicles in the West Wing just beyond the briefing room, are being relocated to temporary quarters across the street to enable a badly needed renovation.

But the fact that the press corps dwelled just a few yards from the Oval Office was deceptive. Any reporter actually trying to take a step beyond the press secretary's office into the rest of the West Wing would have been wrestled to the ground by Secret Service agents.

And whether journalists are caged in a centrally-located pen -- or in one a little further away -- doesn't really matter so long as this White House continues to treat the establishment press with thinly-disguised contempt. The spin, the secrets, the non-answers and the unprecedented lack of access are an insult not only to journalists, but to the public that depends on us to fully inform them about what's really going on in the White House.

So there was something entirely appropriate about Bush stopping by the briefing room yesterday not to answer (or even be asked) a single substantive question -- but to insult pretty much everyone in spitting distance.

Here's the transcript ; here's the video .

Spotting Marlin Fitzwater among the visiting luminaries, the president razzed his father's notoriously homely press secretary: "Marlin, you're looking as pretty as ever."

Tweaking his own press secretary, Tony Snow, Bush said "I want to thank the former spin meisters for joining me up here. Tell my people how to do it, will you?"

When Cox Newspaper reporter Ken Herman responded with a quip to Bush's question about how long the renovation was expected to take -- "We're setting no timetables, Mr. President," Herman said -- Bush responded by calling him a "crackpot." All in good fun, of course.

"It looks a little crowded in here. And so you want to double the size?" Bush taunted the audience. "Forget it."

He needled the television personalities in the audience: "The last time I had a press conference in here, it felt like it was outside. As a matter of fact, some of your makeup was running."

Asked a sycophantic question about the press corps itself -- by chief briefing-room bootlicker Raghubir Goyal, who represents an Indian newspaper I'm not even sure really exists -- Bush responded sarcastically: "It's a beautiful bunch of people."