This, in my opinion, is quite a story. A blasting of the Obama administration came from an unlikely source yesterday: Two mainstream and notably liberal White House reporters - Helen Thomas and Chip Reid - turned the tables on the Obama head propagandist Robert Gibbs, charging the administration with fixing the health care town hall meetings, "pre-packaging" questions, and essentially controlling the whole thing.
The video of the confrontation is absolutely delicious:
Why would two notoriously liberal establishment journalists suddenly turn on an administration they've heretofore been cheerleading for? My guess is it's an ego/pride thing. The rigging of the Huffington Post "reporter" by the Obama team must have infuriated professionals like Thomas and Reid. And if there's one thing you don't want to do, it's upset a news media type with a holier-than-thou complex.
No doubt this confrontation makes the Obama administration look very bad. How it will affect them in the long run might be too soon to tell, but I wouldn't skate on thin ice with Helen Thomas. The woman's been a White House fixture since JFK. She even invoked Nixon, saying: “Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control [the media]. They didn’t try. What the hell do they think we are, puppets?They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them." Damn, that's serious! Careful, Obama, your approval numbers are slipping as it is. And you know what they say: Once you've lost "Aunt Helen," you've lost America.
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