By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I don't generally read the Wall Street Journal editorial pages (except for darlin' Peggy) so it took me a day to pick up on their latest bit of idiocy, in which they whined that the White House had "screened" the reporters that Barack Obama called upon during his Monday night press conference, and alleged that the Lefty press would never have let a Republican president get away with this.
Gimmeabreak.
I have been watching or attending presidential press conferences for too many decades, and I can assure you, as will any honest Washington correspondent or commentator, that there was nothing new in how Audacity operated Monday. As all presidents do, he went to the wire services first, then the networks, then the big national papers. He even made the traditional gesture of calling on the feisty Helen Thomas, who has been covering presidential press conferences since John F. Kennedy.
The only notable difference on Monday night was Audacity's nod to the growing importance of Internet news, which he made by calling, rather late in the proceedings, on a (rather scarily zealous) blogger from The Huffington Post. Make of that what you will, but it's not worth the slur that the president ducked tough questions by looking for tame reporters.
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Clayton of CA 10:22PM July 20, 2009
Paul of WA 9:46PM February 27, 2009
njpro of NJ 4:16PM February 18, 2009