White House Press Corps get their collective panties in a knot

The attached video shows the White House Press Corps grilling Robert Gibbs and for the first time since January 21 are baring their teeth. On the serive it appears the issue at hand is the White House's staging of their media events, particularly the town hall events where the questions are "submitted" beforehand and answered by B. Hussein, making it a press conference more than a Town Hall. Even the troll-like matriarch of the Press Corps, über-lib Helen Thomas throws down against Gibbs.

Of course the real issue is not that the Press Corps is angered by this practice... it has always been the case, White House policy briefings are always carefully orchestrated. What has gotten their panties twisted so hard is that the White House gave a blogger from HuffPo a special pass to enter the briefing room and ask a question the administration fed to him. And it is not the question being fed to them that upsets them, for that is also White House standard operating procedures... it is that the administration gave equal access to a little known blogger and permitted him to enter their domain without having earned his journalistic stripes.

So while it looks on the surface that the press corps is delivering a "we made you and we can break you" message to the administration, the truth is they were just using the staged and scripted health care reform "town hall" as an excuse to vent their outrage over a member of the "new media" being placed on the same level as the "old guard media".