Obama Media in a Huff

During his first daytime news conference on Tuesday, President Obama called on Huffington Post reporter Nico Pitney to ask a prearranged question. Pitney, who writes on Iran for the Internet journal, received a question from an Iranian protester to pass on to the president. Obama’s stage-managing raised eyebrows among the denizens of the White House Press Corps.

The Iranian protestor’s question (if he or she really exists) was:

Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad, and if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of the — of what the demonstrators there are working towards?

The angry White House Press Corps immediately forgot Obama’s staged answer to the staged question. That an Internet journalist got the special treatment was more than newspaper and television reporters could stand; and it set off a firestorm in the mainstream print media.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post fumed:

The use of planted questioners is a no-no at presidential news conferences, because it sends a message to the world -- Iran included -- that the American press isn't as free as advertised. But yesterday wasn't so much a news conference as it was a taping of a new daytime drama, "The Obama Show."

White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton admitted his boss’ collusion with the Huffinton Post:

We did reach out to him [Pitney] prior to press conference to tell him that we had been paying attention to what he had been doing on Iran and there was a chance that he’d be called on. And, he ended up asking the toughest question that the President took on Iran. In the absence of an Iranian press corps in Washington, it was an innovative way to get a question directly from an Iranian.

The mainstream media’s complaints are nothing more than sour grapes. The Obama-worshiping media is whining like  jilted lovers. If any news outlet has a reason to cry in its beer, it’s MSNBC. No news organization works so tirelessly to keep the nation’s heart light burning for Obama than they – most notably Keth Olbermann, Rachel Maddow and fast-talking Chris Matthews. Let’s hope Obama’s open act of favoritism spurs a jilted and jealous media to do their job by asking tough questions that challenge the president’s child-like assumptions about foreign policy and fundamental economics.

WHAT A PATHETIC LITTLE MAN

President Obama's went to great lengths to prearrange a reporter's question in order to deliver what he and his advisers thought was a strong response to events taking place inside Iran:

What we can do is to say, unequivocally, that there are sets of international norms and principles about violence, about dealing with peaceful dissent that spans cultures, spans boarders. And what we’ve been seeing over the Internet, and what we’ve been seeing on news reports, violates those norms and violates those principles. I think it is not too late for the Iranian government to recognize that there is a peaceful path that will lead to stability and legitimacy and prosperity for the Iranian people. We hope they take it.

President Obama painted himself into a corner by pledging to negotiate with terrorist Iran without preconditions. Now that Iran’s ruling Mullahs use terror to suppress their people’s fledgling revolution, Obama is in danger of finding himself on the wrong side of history. So he hastily convenes a news conference with a prearranged question from a compliant media mouthpiece to issue his day-late-and-dollar-short semi-condemnation of Iran’s violent clerics.

This, of course, raises some questions: why is the president suddenly concerned by Iranian terror only when it is turned against the Iranian people? The president was willing to negotiate with Tehran without preconditions even after U.S. soldiers and many civilians were wounded and killed by weapons and roadside explosives supplied to Iraqi terrorists by this same regime. Why the concern and outrage over Iranian dead when he was willing to dismiss American dead in order to begin talks with Iran?

He speaks of Iran’s skirting of “international norms and principle.” Our president, unfortunately, is too foolish to realize that Iran’s barbaric actions are the international norm. As much as it may pain Obama and his supporters to admit, his moral authority as president stems from our nation’s tradition of liberty under the rule of law and our willingness to die so that others may enjoy that same freedom. Instead, he mouths multicultural gibberish by begging Iran to abide by the principles of an imaginary realm where “peaceful dissent...spans cultures, spans borders.” His statement is worthy of a Hallmark card or a worthless United Nations Secretary General, but wholly unworthy of the leader of the free world and President of the United States.