{"id":8884,"date":"2006-10-27T10:23:30","date_gmt":"2006-10-27T14:23:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8884.html"},"modified":"2006-10-27T10:23:30","modified_gmt":"2006-10-27T14:23:30","slug":"whats-it-like-to-be-kidnapped-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/whats-it-like-to-be-kidnapped-man\/","title":{"rendered":"‘What’s it like to be kidnapped, man?’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The president had a very lengthy chat in the Oval Office this week with a series of conservative writers, including National Review’s Byron York and US News’s Michael Barone. There are plenty of gems in the transcript<\/a>, but like Michael Crowley<\/a>, this one<\/a> left me shaking my head:<\/p>\n

“One of the stories – interesting stories I tell is about the fellow that came here. He got kidnapped and he was rescued pretty early by our Delta team. I said, ‘What’s it like to be kidnapped, man? It must have been weird – Baghdad, to be kidnapped.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For some reason, reading this reminded me an episode of The West Wing called, “Posse Comitatus.”<\/p>\n

BARTLET: C.J. Cregg was getting threats so we put an agent on her. He’s a good guy. He was on my detail for a while, and he was in Rosslyn. He walked in the middle of an armed robbery, and was shot and killed after detaining one of the suspects.<\/p>\n

RITCHIE: Oh. Crime. Boy, I don’t know.<\/p>\n

BARTLET: [sighs] We should have a great debate, Rob. We owe it to everyone. When I was running as a governor, I didn’t know anything. I made them start Bartlet college in my dining room. Two hours every morning on foreign affairs and the military. You can do that.<\/p>\n

RITCHIE: How many different ways you think you’re gonna find to call me dumb?<\/p>\n

BARTLET: I wasn’t, Rob. But you’ve turned being un-engaged into a Zen-like thing, and you shouldn’t enjoy it so much is all, and if it appears at times as if I don’t like you, that’s the reason why.<\/p>\n

RITCHIE: You’re what my friends call a superior sumbitch. You’re an academic elitist and a snob. You’re, uh, Hollywood, you’re weak, you’re liberal, and you can’t be trusted. And if it appears from time to time as if I don’t like you, well, those are just a few of the many reasons why.<\/p>\n

(“Hail to the Chief ” starts to play in the background)<\/p>\n

BARTLET: They’re playing my song…. In the future, if you’re wondering, “Crime. Boy, I don’t know” is when I decided to kick your ass.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Maybe it’s just me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The president had a very lengthy chat in the Oval Office this week with a series of conservative writers, including National Review’s Byron York and US News’s Michael Barone. There are plenty of gems in the transcript, but like Michael Crowley, this one left me shaking my head: “One of the stories – interesting stories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}