With Congress away on recess, President Barack Obama is stepping up his sales pitch for health care reform, tapping online social media in a new end run around the traditional news filter.
At a town hall today in Annandale, Obama will answer questions from a live audience, and also from users of popular online communities including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.
“The president wanted to continue the conversation that we started last week with town halls,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. It’s “a continuing conversation about how to move health care reform forward.”
Although the format opens up the opportunity for questioning Obama to a potentially limitless online audience, the White House controls which questions are asked.
And what a coinkidink, some of the questioners were Obama insiders.
The president called randomly on three audience members. All turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the Service Employees International Union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. White House officials said that was a coincidence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/01/AR2009070100950.html
This is just the latest in Obama’s staged media circus.
He did in in March during a White House town hall via the Internet.
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/the-ones-staged-townhall-meeting/
He’s been doing it quite a bit during press conferences, too. There’s been more than one leftwing blog plant in the “press corps” with a pre-ordained question. In this particular instance, it was Nico Pitney, a HuffPo hack.
http://www.blogrunner.com/snapshot/D/2/1/obama_calls_on_huffpost_for_iran_question/
Obama also had the unmitigated gall to set up the very troops he despises:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/04/15/obamas-staged-iraq-visit/
The far Left mainstream media—‘thrill going up their legs’ and all—propelled him into office, but some of them are *shocked* that he controls them. One, ironically, is Helen Thomas:
Following a testy exchange during Wednesday’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.
“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?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”
Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/helen-thomas-not-even-nixon-tried-control-media-obama
Why yes, Helen, you are his fucking puppets. You’ve been that way since he announced his candidacy.
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2008/11/12/the-media-cavalcade-of-bias-hypocrisy-and-craptastic-stupidity/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/01/23/of-dear-leaders-and-kool-aid/
Thomas declared that all reporters should be liberal, a belief widely shared and practiced by her MSM collegues.
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/01/22/helen-thomas-reporters-should-be-liberal/
The only news outlet who doesn’t kiss his ass is Fox News. They’re the one renegade in a sea of sycophants.
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/06/17/obama-laments-fox-news-wont-kiss-his-ass/
Journalism’s obituary was written the day the MSM took a sharp left turn and never looked back. As I’ve said, they’re not in Obama’s lap anymore, they’re sleeping with the sonofabitch.