Taking notes

 

Jen Psaki finally tired of making a fool of herself as the White House press secretary and has effected a career move that will allow her to make a fool of herself at MSNBC instead. A replacement was needed, and one could be forgiven for having predicted a certain level of diversity hiring.

Karine Jean-Pierre has a name that would have fitted in neatly during the French Revolution and is certainly easier on the eye than Psaki. The outgoing and ferociously red-headed ex-press secretary has something fish-like about her, and not in a nice way. There is a touch of H P Lovecraft about her features, as though she hangs out with Dagon at weekends.

Jean-Pierre certainly ticks all the boxes, and one of her first announcements from the press podium - aka Peter Doocey's personal coconut-shy - was to tell the world that she was a black, gay, immigrant woman. We couldn't see her legs, so it is mere conjecture as to whether White House staff amputated one to get the full house of minority victimhood.

She is one of the generation that begin sentences with 'so' or 'I mean', but it is not that aspect of her mangling of the English language that is of major concern. She was clearly reading her answers from notes. Let's have a little think about that.

Press questions at White House briefings are not, to the best of my knowledge, submitted in advance. Most of the press pack are MSM, and so their questions are lame and softball. Only Doocey plays hardball, and he struck out Jean-Pierre in the first five minutes. But she was reading from some kind of crib-sheet. In other words she was not answering the questions but mechanically repeating an inventory of buzz-words and rhetorical nonsense. No one was expecting Horace or Seneca, but her answers made less than no sense.

It shows a level of contempt from the elites that we are becoming used to. Jean-Pierre's parroting of a pre-prepared script - quite possibly written in crayon - effectively says to the press, and by extension the American people, that questions are not worth answering. Shut up, they explained.

I don't give Jean-Pierre that long in the job. She already looks out of her depth, while Doocey lurks like the shark in Jaws. Next up for the job? Well, they would have to outbid a black, gay, immigrant woman. Maybe that amputation is not too far away.