http://www.cleveland.com/obrien/index.ssf/2009/06/obama_presses_the_press_into_s.html#more

 Quote:
A time-honored joke in America's newsrooms involves the reporter who has the ideal quote to put in his story. It's perfectly paced. It's punchy. It's the one-sentence statement that says it all.

His only problem is that no one he has talked to has said it.

So, the joke goes, the reporter calls a source and in the course of the conversation says, "So, would you say, as good a man as Mr. Jones is, he just isn't the woman for the job?"

And when the person at the other end of the line says, "Yes, I would," the reporter says, "Great. Then go ahead and say that -- exactly that."

I can't say I've ever heard the joke told the other way, with the interviewee putting words in the reporter's mouth, because most of the notebook-toting watchdogs I've known would find it insulting rather than funny.

Why, that would be like the White House calling a friendly media type and suggesting that he ask a certain question at the next day's presidential press conference.

Oh, wait. That happened this week.

The second question of President Barack Obama's Tuesday press conference involved just such choreography.

"I know Nico Pitney is here from the Huffington Post," Obama said as he scanned the room.

He could have said, "I know that, because we made darned sure he was going to be here," but he didn't, the old smoothie.

What Obama did go on to say to Pitney was this: "Nico, I know that you and all across the Internet, we've been seeing a lot of reports coming out of Iran. I know that there may actually be questions from people in Iran who are communicating through the Internet. Do you have a question?"

He could have said, "Do you have the question? The one we told you this morning to be ready to ask? Because I'm just itching to answer it." That would have put Pitney in an awkward position, though, so Obama didn't go into detail.

Pitney, play-acting right along, did his part, beginning, "I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian."

He could have said, "I wanted to use this opportunity to ask you a question directly from an Iranian, because that's what you asked me to do and because I really, really want you to like me." But he had more sense than that.

The question -- not that it matters terribly -- was this: "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?"

Obama could have said, "Yes, we're going to accept the election of Ahmadinejad, and yes, that's a betrayal of the demonstrators," because that's what will prove to be the truth.

Since, with this administration, there's never any rush to get to the truth, he blathered on instead about how it's up to the Iranian people to decide who will be their leaders -- which will be news to the mullahs who actually pick the leaders -- and about how it's not too late for the Iranian government to play nice.

So that's that. Everyone feel better?

No.

The oddities that attended Pitney's question -- that it was the second one of the news conference, that it came from a media fringe player, that just before the event began Pitney was ushered into a far more prominent place in the room than his status deserved, that the exchange with Obama so clearly smacked of a setup -- did not go unnoticed.

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote: "Reporters looked at one another in amazement at the stagecraft they were witnessing. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel grinned at the surprised TV correspondents in the first row."

Stagecraft.

Sunday, we get a New York Times piece suggesting that some trumped up "Obama effect" sparked the Iranian protests. Tuesday, we get the Huffington Post eagerly doing the White House's bidding. Wednesday, we get ABC's Obamacare infomercial, broadcast from the East Room.

There's an Obama effect, all right. But it's not playing out in Iran. It's right here, among America's lovesick media, and it may actually be intensifying.