Affirming their complete transformation from watchdogs into lapdogs, the White House Press Corps greeted President Barack Obama’s return to Washington, D.C. on Monday with the following question–which they shouted in unison: “Did you beat Tiger?!?”
The press pool report, cited by Politico’s Dylan Byers, makes a mockery of the serious efforts of Fox News’ Ed Henry, who is president of the White House Correspondents Association, to ensure “transparency” and press access to the president.
Henry has been protesting President Obama’s refusal to speak with reporters or pose for photographs during his entire weekend on vacation in Florida, during which Obama took golf lessons with the world’s top instructor and played a round with Tiger Woods.
Yet it is difficult to take reporters seriously when their first question is not about Obama’s stalled Cabinet appointees, not about the emerging details of the Benghazi scandal, not about the economy and not about the murder spree that continued in the wake of Obama’s visit to Chicago on Friday–but about a golf game.
What good is access, if all that the nation’s leading journalists care about is trivia, frivolity and celebrity buzz?
For the record, the president did not answer the question, whose answer should have been quite obvious.