Who Gets Custody of Joe Biden?

Ben Smith at Politico points out something interesting. Barack Obama just kicked the press out of bed and took his money off the dresser.

In his bizarre, whiny, faux-patriotic response (see Otter’s courtroom scene in Animal House), Obama began to criticize the press for paying attention to his pig/lipstick/smelly fish gaffe. He began ranting about how “the news media” were going after the story, and he compared it to catnip. He said America (stand, place hand over heart) was the true victim.

What Smith omits from his quote is Obama’s feeble effort to make it look like he’s not really criticizing the press. Obama expressly went after the press, but then after the words “This is what they want to spend two of the last 55 days talking about,” he tried to turn it around, claiming “they” meant McCain’s people.

Let’s be honest. He did swerve toward McCain at the end. But that was only after he made it very clear he was trying to run down the press.

What will happen now? If there is one thing the press hates as much or more than a Republican candidate, it’s being told how to do its job. Barack Obama can’t handle criticism, but compared to the press, he’s gracious. The press has a long memory and a short fuse. And it is nearly impossible to beat them, once the bombs start flying.

How can this man be so ungrateful? The press sent three news anchors on his ridiculous jaunt to Europe. They put Sarah Palin on a magazine cover over the words “Babies Lies & Scandal,” one week after putting him and his wife behind “Michelle Obama: Why Barack Loves Her.” They ignored the first half of McCain’s campaign. They continue to ignore Obama’s confessed-terrorist buddy, Bill Ayres. They sat on the Edwards scandal because they thought he might be Obama’s running mate. They practically groped Obama at the debates. They made an icky homoerotic remark about tingling legs. They uncritically published lie after lie about Sarah Palin, even as untrained bloggers with day jobs were disproving the rumors. How can he risk alienating an utterly corrupt journalistic establishment, which fawns over him as if he pooped diamonds and cancer vaccines?

The press loves him so much, they’ve had to discipline themselves. The cable pseudopod of NBC, the farthest-left, least self-aware network, actually became embarrassed by Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews and removed them from their anchor posts. You can’t buy friends like that. They are irreplaceable.

How does he think he got where he is? He’s a junior senator with 143 days of work behind him and no major accomplishments. Before that, he was a state senator with no major accomplishments. Before that, he was a political machine flunky. He’s not even a real lawyer; he has never had a practice. He thinks he jumped to the top of Mount Everest, and now he’s throwing rocks at the Sherpas who carried him.

The most likely thing is that the press will bite its collective tongue and suffer the insults until he’s elected. But maybe they won’t. They brought Gary Hart down, after he dared them to prove he was an adulterer. They might give the Precious a dose of the same bitter medicine.

To paraphrase Dean Vernon Wormer, maybe it’s time someone put his foot down. And that foot is the press.