Petrelis Files

Fox News Reporter Plays Lesbian Matchmaker for Condi Rice?

I am not familiar with Fox News reporter James Rosen's on-air interview skills, but after reading the State Department's transcript of his talk this week with Secretary Condoleezza Rice, which is both goofy and serious, I sensed he's a graduate of the frat-boy school of journalism.

Of particular interest to me is the way in which Rosen uses language more appropriate for a lesbian matchmaker than a journalist at the end of his interview, as he talks about a female Fox reporter and a gift from her to the secretary.

Makes me wonder if Rice has ever been asked on the record about the rumors of her alleged lesbian orientation. Couldn't find a thing about that question through Googling.

This is part of the State Department's official transcript of the interview:

[snip]
MR. ROSEN: I think it's outrageous, frankly. All right. I close with a gift for you. You met this person once, I believe, but you really, I think, ought to know each other because this woman is, I think you'll have an interest in knowing her. She is one of our FOX News anchors in New York. Her name is Lauren Green. She is brilliant, she's beautiful, she's African American, she's single and she's a concert pianist in her spare time.

SECRETARY RICE: My goodness.

MR. ROSEN: And she asked me to give you her CD and I promised her that I would.

SECRETARY RICE: That's perfect.

MR. ROSEN: And here's her doing a number of different classical pieces.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, that's special.

MR. ROSEN: So there you have it.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank her very much and I look forward to seeing her sometime.

MR. ROSEN: All right. She's going to want to hear from you.

SECRETARY RICE: And maybe even playing dual piano sometime.

MR. ROSEN: That would be great. Thank you, as always.

SECRETARY RICE: Thank you. [snip]


I can understand a hard-edged Fox journalist using some of his face-time with the secretary to endear himself on a very personal level to her and presenting her with a gift, because he may help him get answers to difficult questions she might not otherwise address, like her supposed lesbianism, but what is hard to fathom is why Rosen mentions that his gal-pal is single.

Why the hell is Rosen practically setting up a date for the two women and did Fox sow that part of the interview in its story from it? This queer mind wants to know. And good for Rice for being open to meeting the gal-pal, who's single, you know!

Here are more excerpts of goofiness from Rosen during the interview, which was conducted on September 27 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti:


[snip]
MR. ROSEN: Madame Secretary, thank you, as always, for your time. I wonder if we could begin by establishing on the record that you've missed me terribly.

SECRETARY RICE: (Laughter.) Of course.

MR. ROSEN: All right. Onto the alleged off-the-charts questions because I know our time is short. I was criticized in the Washington Post after our last interview because I'd had asked if you ever wanted to be a superhero and you said, "Yes." And they said you didn't ask the obviously follow-up question, Rosen, of which one? And I thought doing that would make me sound a little too much like Barbara Walters asking Katharine Hepburn which kind of tree she would like to be. So I will follow-up simply by asking which super powers is it that you covet, that you would like to have?

SECRETARY RICE: Super powers?

MR. ROSEN: Yes. You said you wanted to be a superhero occasionally.

SECRETARY RICE: I'd like to be able to see through walls. (Laughter.)

MR. ROSEN: Which one? All right. You made the mistake of sharing what you called "an inside joke" with an interviewer recently, in which you said that you had been president of the family.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

MR. ERELI: What did that mean?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, there are only three of us, so it wasn't a very big constituency -- my father, my mother and me. And I could always count on my mother's vote and my own. My father, I think, probably wanted to be president of the family, too. No, it was actually a very important post. We organized -- I organized the family, as president, to do things like have a family meeting about when we were going to leave on a particular trip. So when we were going to go to Denver from Alabama, I would have a family meeting. We'd decide what time we were going to leave. We'd decide where we were going to stop over. So it actually had real responsibilities. But it said something about my parents who were determined that even at that early age that I'd have different experiences.

MR. ROSEN: And you were not autocrat in that role?

SECRETARY RICE: Of course not. Of course not.

MR. ROSEN: All right. You turned -- well, I don't want to get into age matters, but you were at an impressionable age during the counter culture and did it just pass you by entirely or did it anything from the counter culture lodge within you and stay with you?


SECRETARY RICE: I was very young at the time of the counter culture. I was 12 or 13 and that's kind of young. And I was a music major. All I did was play the piano and ice skate. And so I don't think I focused very much on the counter culture. But I was pretty young. I'm on the young end of that -- of that spectrum.

MR. ROSEN: Madame Secretary, I'll be blunt. Did you ever do drugs?

SECRETARY RICE: (Laughter.) James, why don't you go back to Iran? (Laughter.)

MR. ROSEN: (Laughter.) I don't think they'd like me there either. (Laughter.) Last question. Last question. You do so many interviews, sometimes five a day, and it requires a lot of repetition on your part. Part of me wants to ask simply how you manage to do that; but my real question is what advice would you give to somebody who's thinking about a career in public life of some kind, about how to deal with the media. What are a couple of most important things someone should keep in mind for dealing with the media?

SECRETARY RICE: I think the most important thing is to always be willing to say what you can say and what you can't. I told the media I simply can't talk about that because there's no reason to do anything but to state the truth. But part of the truth is to say when it's not possible to talk about things. Sometimes, I think, for instance, in diplomatic activities, I very often said to members of the media I'm going to actually talk to the President of that country or the Foreign Minister of that country before I talk about it in the press or I'm not going to reveal every detail of a diplomatic exchange just because I'm asked about it. And I think if you deal in that sort of straightforward way, you're better off -- if you could tell me. [snip]