Isn't This Special?

Image credit: The New Yorker (reduced by Cujo359)

It's beginning to look like the Obama campaign wants to emulate the Bush Administration in at least one way - pettiness:

Obama’s trip to Kuwait, Afghanistan and Kuwait is part of a congressional delegation, and he has no press with him — not even the pool reporter who typically records his off-hours movements.

Forty journalists, including such leading correspondents as Dan Balz of The Washington Post, will be aboard his plane for next week’s swing through Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and England.

The campaign received 200 requests for press seats on the plane.

Among those for whom there was no room was Ryan Lizza, Washington correspondent of The New Yorker. The campaign, which was furious about the magazine’s satirical cover this week, cited space constraints in turning him away.

CBS Scores First Obama Interview

[emphasis mine]

Well, isn't that special? The guy who wouldn't stand up for the Constitution is perfectly willing to slight one of the few major publications in this country that targets a progressive audience for publishing a cover that disparages the dimwitted, bigoted nonsense that must give Obama's campaign fits. This doesn't even make much sense when you think about it for a moment. Rachel Sklar observes at the Huffington Post:

The irony is that the person Heismanned here was Lizza, who just wrote a 15,000 word piece about what Obama learned about hardscrabble politics on his upward arc in Chicago. According to a Chicago pol interviewed by Lizza, he earned a reputation that "'you're not going to punk me, you're not going to roll me over, you're not going to jam me.'" That seems to be the message the Obama campaign was sending here.

Or maybe, like Ari Fleischer once warned, they would just like people to watch what they say.

Obama's Revenge: New Yorker Reporter Excluded From Press Plane For Overseas Trip

The New Yorker has treated Obama far better than some of the networks and other news organizations listed in that Politico article, yet instead of showing them the door, the Obama campaign showed it to Lizza. Hit the guy who won't hit back. This is the sort of thing punks do, not Presidents. Mick Arran hit the nail on the head here:

I would like anybody (and BO would be nice, tho it will NEVER happen) to rip the major media a new one for their willingness to turn into Bush propaganda machines, for their shoddy "journalism" and infotainment values. (Actually, I would have taken any one of those or a number of other legitimate criticisms.) [Obama] had a chance to do that, out in the open, and he bailed. He cowered behind a flimsy excuse and got his revenge second-hand where it was safe.

That's bullshit and you know it.

Who's Running Obama's Campaign, Karl Rove?

This is especially ironic and stupid of him when he has been getting some great opportunities to look like he's Presidential material. He certainly has gotten a big boost from Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki this week. Yet he, or his staff, have managed to dilute this tremendous PR by engaging in some pointless pettiness.

For his willingness to be both petty and stupid at the same time, Senator Obama gets to see that New Yorker cover here one more time.

(h/t - Dana Hunter provided one of the links here.)