All the Presidents' Pets Read Online Free PDF Page A

Out We Can Always Come Back Later”). He had little patience for whining. “This should be exciting,” I said with as much peppiness as I could muster. “Thank you, Eric.”
    Eric’s voice brightened. “Good luck, Mo. And careful getting through that pressroom doggy door. It’s a tight squeeze, I hear.”
    I hung up. Was I bitter? Not really, I was laughing. Okay, I was laughing bitterly. I’d never even had a dog and now I was going to be reporting full-time on one, against America’s cable news sweetheart.
    Laurie Dhue. Among the vast firmament of Fox News starlets Laurie was the brightest. Fox News chief Roger Ailes, the Louis B. Mayer of twenty-four-hour news, had early on chosen her as a favorite. She had the girl-next-door moxie of June Allyson and the lips of Lana Turner, shiny wet, like she had just eaten a pork chop. With the big blue eyes of Betty Hutton and the husky voice of Betty Bacall, she was the buxom blonde who appealed to all Fox News watchers, a wide-ranging group of conservative white men over fifty. Laurie was the Viagra in their Cialis.
    It was a combination that had made her release of
Red, White and Barney: My First Dog
(Random House, $29.95) a gigantic best-seller last Christmas. The authorized “dogography” was a coffee-table book that featured a red-white-and-blue-clad Laurie frolicking with the Scottish terrier all over the South Lawn. The access she’d been granted was truly astonishing, though the book seemed to feature the author more than the subject. It’s true that the “centerfold” shot of Laurie and Barney splashing in the fountain was split pretty evenly between reporter and dog, a “fair and balanced pose,” the caption coyly read. I particularly liked the shot of a teary Laurie saluting our troops with one arm and snuggling Barney in the other at Andrews Air Force Base.
    Some Democrats complained about the shot of the two of them in front of the FDR Memorial. Laurie sat in FDR’s lap and Barney blocked the small statue of the thirty-second President’s own Scottie, Fala. The Dems claimed that the shot was meant to suggest that Bush had eclipsed FDR as a “War President” but even they conceded that Laurie was a huge hit. “I about expected Roosevelt to get up from outta that chair, he must have been so excited,” cracked Georgia senator and Fox News contributor Zell Miller.
    Naturally Laurie became the envy of a whole bevy of Fox beauties. The vixenish newsreader Kiran Chetry called her “the Beltway Boys’ Goodtime Girl,” a reference to Fox’s bad boys Morton Kondracke and Fred Barnes. The lusty Linda Vester whispered about “Laurie’s Little Helpers,” pills that she purportedly took to keep pace with her grueling studio schedule. These were all lies.
    The luscious Laurie shrewdly held her head high and Mr. Ailes rewarded Laurie’s hard work by giving her her own hour-long weekday show about the First Dog.
The Dig Story with Laurie Dhue
featured a “Daily Doggie Treat” (her version of O’Reilly’s opening “Talking Points Memo”), fierce debates over pet care, clips from
Here’s Boomer
and
Benji,
and a few car chases thrown in for good measure. On the screen, just above the terror alert, was a clock counting down to Barney’s next birthday. Inset above that was a live shot of the entrance to Barney’s doghouse. Alongside that was the temperature reading from inside the doghouse.

    The show featured a parade of retired generals, former prosecutors, royal watchers, and administration representatives who came by, not only to gush over images of Barney, but also to remind Americans that Barney wanted us to support all the White House’s initiatives.
    As National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice reasoned, “The President believes that true Americans love dogs, in particular Barney.”
    â€œAnd Barney, it is