It doesn’t get more ironic than this: Barack Obama, who boasted of how his administration was the “most transparent in history,” cracked jokes at the Gridiron Club annual dinner Saturday night about his transparency while the event was closed to outside press. Obama said:
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Now, since I don’t often speak to a room full of journalists — (laughter) — I thought I should address a few concerns tonight. Some of you have said that I’m ignoring the Washington press corps — that we’re too controlling. You know what, you were right. I was wrong and I want to apologize in a video you can watch exclusively at whitehouse.gov. (Laughter.) While we’re on this subject, I want to acknowledge Ed Henry, who is here — who is the fearless leader of the Washington press corps now. (Applause.) And at Ed’s request, tonight I will take one question from the press. Jay, do we have a question? (Laughter.) Surprisingly, it’s a question from Ed Henry. (Laughter.) “Mr. President, will you be taking any questions tonight?” (Laughter.) I’m happy to answer that. No, Ed, I will not. (Laughter.)
The Gridiron Club is a group of 65 journalists, and the juxtaposition of those journalists holding others at bay has some in the press unhappy. Ever eager to grab some crumbs from the White House table, though, the press assumed their usual position as lapdogs. Howard Mortman, the communications director at C-SPAN, said, “We are obviously disappointed particularly considering the President is attending this year. We continue to believe the dinner should be open to media coverage.” But then he continued, “Because the Club is permitting a pool reporter, we will make lemonade from lemons and discuss the dinner on air using the pool report, b-roll, and aggregated tweets.”
