Trouble In Paradise?

The Obamedia may have fallen head-over-heels in love with Red Barry, but already there are signs that the object of their devoted, toadying, obsequious worship may be ending the honeymoon early:

Three news agencies refused to distribute White House-provided photos of President Barack Obama in the Oval Office on Wednesday, arguing that access should have been provided to news photographers.

The Ass[holi]ated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse said the White House was breaking with long-standing tradition in not allowing news photographers to capture the president at work in the Oval Office on his first day.

"We are not distributing what are, in effect, visual press releases," said Michael Oreskes, managing editor for U.S. news at the AP....

"Using these photos would be a major break with established precedent and would compromise the long-held tradition of independent photo coverage of the president and the White House by the major news agencies," said Courtney Dolan, spokeswoman for Thomson Reuters.

Well, these people were all for "change"; perhaps being treated like underlings and palm-frond-wavers wasn't what they had in mind.

But just in case there was any doubt about what the Obamedia's designated "place" is in Obamerika, this little altercation should remove all doubt:

President Obama made a surprise visit to the White House press corps Thursday night, but got agitated when he was faced with a substantive question.

Asked how he could reconcile a strict ban on lobbyists in his administration with a Deputy Defense Secretary nominee who lobbied for Raytheon, Obama interrupted with a knowing smile on his face.

“Ahh, see,” he said, “I came down here to visit. See this is what happens. I can’t end up visiting with you guys and shaking hands if I’m going to get grilled every time I come down here.”

Pressed further by the Politico reporter about his Pentagon nominee, William J. Lynn III, Obama turned more serious, putting his hand on the reporter’s shoulder and staring him in the eye.

 ”Alright, come on” he said, with obvious irritation in his voice. “We will be having a press conference at which time you can feel free to [ask] questions. Right now, I just wanted to say hello and introduce myself to you guys - that’s all I was trying to do.” 

Welcome to the presidency, Lucifer.

Actually, his prickly, thin-skinned snappishness doesn't surprise me.  He was never, EVER, not a single time, challenged, vetted, or otherwise asked anything remotely resembling a tough question by the press for the past two years, and the three previous years of his Senate campaign and two Senate years before that.  Five years on the national stage he has been nothing but bowed down to by the reportariate.  He wouldn't know a "grilling" from the price of women's apparel on Ferenginar; it's completely outside his frame of reference, so he has no experience at such things and no reason to expect it now that he's on the throne.

What's astonishing is that the Enemy Media is actually starting to cross him.  Maybe it's because he's not being deferential to them, especially after all they did to help him win the election, or because he's proving to be a god with all too clay feet as his deeds are already falling well short of his "soaring, majestic" BS rhetoric that they all foolishly bought into, or because his narcissistic ego has convinced him that he's even above THEM and that any degree of "watchdogging" is "blasphemy" and thus not going to be tolerated.

In a nutshell, the Enemy Media may have created their own Frankenstein's monster that is no longer troubling to distinguish in its condescension between them and the center-right they created him to destroy.

VDH put it this way:

As Obama begins to govern and as the public sees that he simply borrowed Bush’s foreign policy rhetoric, jazzed it up with his cadences and pauses, and then took either Bushites or Democratic centrists and called them hope and change, and as he glued new rhetorical veneers on the Patriot Act and FISA, and as he alienates many by making decisions other than voting present, and as the gaffes begin (Biden and Michelle can’t be put under wraps forever), and the Chicago fumes linger (Blago ain’t through yet), the fawning media will begin to look embarrassed, then ridiculous, and finally completely bankrupt. They offered no audit of Obama, no tough treatment, no honest examination of his flips, no balance in their treatment of Bush, and they will soon pay a terrible price for that derelection and worse, as the public sees them as the state megaphones that they have so sadly become. The only suspense? Will they play Pravda to the end?

If the above is any indication, maybe not.  If Red Barry's head has become so enormous that he is inclined to start biting the hand that fed him all the way to the Brown House within a matter of hours after taking residence there, the press may well react like the proverbial woman scorned and start treating him like the ingrate he is.

Or at least covering him with something approaching, if never quite reaching, objectivity.  Given all the reverses, setbacks, and disasters he's going to blunder his way into (but which, naturally, he'll never see coming), that's a formula for that Politico encounter writ cosmically large.

It goes without saying that B.O. would never have survived the press savaging to which his predecessor was subjected for eight years.  But a man who has been feted and extolled without interruption for his entire adult life will find even reasonable media treatment intolerable.  Just one more reason why his will be either as big a failed presidency as Jimmy Carter's - or one more "transformative" than that of Hugo Chavez.

Picture that same Politico encounter with the reporter being taken out and shot through the head on President Hussein's orders.  Wonder how much Chris Matthew's leg would be tingling then.

UPDATE: Not that this'll happen overnight, of course....