Obama hides from the press
by Don Surber
The only president to ever need a teleprompter to handle a press conference — so his staff could feed him the answers — held his last prime-time press conference in July 2009, which ended in disaster when he said the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “acted stupidly” in arresting his friend Henry Louis Gates.
Mr. Obama has been interviewed a total of 408 times in his first three years as president, according to Martha Kumar, a professor at Towson University who works alongside reporters at the White House. President George W. Bush had given 136 interviews at the same period in his presidency, and President Bill Clinton had given 166.
Those 408 interviews include appearances on Jay Leno, You Tube and Twitter questions from sycophants, and the like.
by Don Surber
The only president to ever need a teleprompter to handle a press conference — so his staff could feed him the answers — held his last prime-time press conference in July 2009, which ended in disaster when he said the police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, “acted stupidly” in arresting his friend Henry Louis Gates.
The New York Times broke the unwritten code among journalists that you never, ever complain about mistreatment from Barack Obama.
In a blog post, Brian Stetler wrote:
Mr. Obama has been interviewed a total of 408 times in his first three years as president, according to Martha Kumar, a professor at Towson University who works alongside reporters at the White House. President George W. Bush had given 136 interviews at the same period in his presidency, and President Bill Clinton had given 166.
However, Mr. Obama has comparatively avoided Q.&A.s with scrums of reporters, according to Ms. Kumar, answering questions at 94 photo opportunities and other such sessions in his first three years. Mr. Bush had spoken at 307 such sessions after three years in office, and Mr. Clinton, 493.
Those 408 interviews include appearances on Jay Leno, You Tube and Twitter questions from sycophants, and the like.
President Obama has bubble-wrapped himself in the White House. His press staff reflects his attitude of disdain toward the press, as Brian Stetler noted:
Daniel Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, responded in an e-mail, “The idea that interacting with the public through social media is somehow going around the White House press corps is a prehistoric notion.”
“The media has become so diffuse that communicating ones’ message requires a lot more work than it used to,” he wrote. “You have to be willing to go where the viewers are, because they now have so much choice in where they get their information.”
Bizarre. The imperial presidency rises. No one in that “prehistoric notion” called the White House Press corps is willing to call Obama out on this. Not even Jake Tapper.
And this echoes in corporate chambers as well. From Glenn Reynolds: “I was talking to a CEO last year — an Obama supporter no less — who told me he was amazed at how openly Administration officials threatened to use media demonization if he didn’t play ball. It’s like they’ve got the press in their pocket or something. But now some of those officials have to be thinking that the people they threaten will be around after Obama’s gone, and they’ll remember.”
The press and corporate America allow this man to bully them. They deserve scorn.
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