{"id":1580,"date":"2009-10-05T14:35:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-05T14:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2009\/10\/05\/off-the-record-get-real"},"modified":"2009-10-05T14:35:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-05T14:35:00","slug":"off-the-record-get-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1580","title":{"rendered":"Off the record? Get real!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

\"\"<\/a> Former President George W. Bush returned to West Texas this past week to give a speech at a fundraiser for Lubbock Christian University.<\/p>\n

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Bush’s advance team put out the word: The appearance would be “off the record,” an announcement that rankled my colleagues at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal — and with good reason.<\/div>\n

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As I understand it, Bush’s team offered up some malarkey about the 43rd president of the United States being a “private citizen,” and that reporters would not be allowed to, um, report on the speech.<\/div>\n

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Private citizen? Let me ponder that for a moment. OK, no he’s not.<\/div>\n

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The immediate former president\/commander in chief is no such thing. As A-J Editor Terry Greenberg noted, he cannot be off the record when speaking to a crowd of 1,500 listeners. The term usually refers to interviews with media outlets, not public appearances, Greenberg said.<\/div>\n

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Besides, when is a former president ever fully a private citizen, especially when he gets protection from the U.S. Secret Service? Last time I checked, the public was paying for that security detail.<\/div>\n\n
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Former President George W. Bush returned to West Texas this past week to give a speech at a fundraiser for Lubbock Christian University. Bush’s advance team put out the word: The appearance would be “off the record,” an announcement that rankled my colleagues at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal — and with good reason. As I understand … Continue reading Off the record? Get real!<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1580"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1580\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}