It's Friday afternoon, so here's the marvelous story of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, getting tanked. That is, soaked in DUNK tank.
As you may have heard, last night the White House hosted the first ever White House Luau, and set some sort of record for the number of macadamia nuts brought to Capitol Hill. In keeping with island traditions, there was a dunk tank. And Gibbs offered himself up as one of the victims. Tommy Christopher, on hand for Asylum, documented the action on video, and provided some fascinating back story:
In the zaniest White House press briefing (a low bar, for sure) since Robert Gibbs started collecting cell phones, the press secretary took an out-of-the-blue swipe at the Fox News channel when a reporter mistakenly said that the deficit "keeps [Obama] asleep at night," instead of awake. Gibbs corrected him, and added, "Fox is what puts him to sleep."
As luck would have it, Fox would shortly get a shot at revenge.
Ahh, but the path of dunking Robert Gibbs in some water for trash-talking you in the press room never does run true. As it happened, Fox's correspondent, Mike Emanuel, couldn't close the deal, at one point, missing the tank entirely:
But the throngs were not to be denied seeing Gibbs soaked, thanks to the ice cold veins of Associated Press reporter Ben Feller, and CBS' Bill Plante. (Seriously, there was no way Plante was going to fail. He was born to drop press secretaries in dunk tanks.)
An observation: Do legs come any paler than Gibbs'? Look at those bone-white stalks! Get some sun, dude!
Also, the Washington Post's Mary Ann Akers reports that a toss from Sasha Obama landed Rahm Emanuel in the drink, and that "One guest at the luau 'lost count' after Peter Orszag was dunked for the 12th time."
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