Video: Obama shuts down Helen Thomas

posted at 2:05 pm on June 24, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
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Here’s a mid-day palate cleanser for everyone, and a reminder that anyone who tells Helen Thomas to pipe down can’t be all bad. President Obama flashes his annoyance at Thomas’ interruption of his answer to Suzanne Malveaux of CNN, right in the middle of soaring rhetoric about freedom:

Q We also have people on the ground who have been saying that the streets are quieter now and that is because they feel that they’re paralyzed by fear — fear of people gone missing, fear of violence, that perhaps this is a movement that’s gone underground or perhaps is dying. Do you have any concern over that?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes. I have concern about how peaceful demonstrators and people who want their votes counted may be stifled from expressing those concerns. I think, as I said before, there are certain international norms of freedom of speech, freedom of expression –

THOMAS: Then why won’t you allow the photos –

THE PRESIDENT: Hold on a second, Helen. That’s a different question. (Laughter.)

The question she tried to stuff at the end was about the photos that Obama originally planned to allow to surface showing abuses of prisoners at the hands of the US military. Obama had to reverse himself after the military objected to Obama’s surrender to the ACLU. Congress also demanded that the pictures remain classified. Thomas was about to ask Obama how that squared with “freedom of expression,” but Obama wisely followed a long presidential tradition of ignoring Thomas instead of answering.

I think the one violation of norms that bothered Thomas the most was that she got shut out of this press conference.

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