Chris Christie fans delighted in the dressing-down of a reporter during a press conference on Saturday that focused on a local issue — at least until a reporter asked a question of Christie about the special session of the state legislature he called to press for a middle-class tax cut.  Christie responded by asking the reporter, “Are you stupid?  On-topic!”  CNN has the clip:

Total Christie awesomeness? Perhaps, but if so, then reconcile that with your feelings about this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xnFhvjhAtI

I know plenty of conservatives who defended The Daily Caller’s Neil Munro for interrupting Barack Obama’s statement with his question as a fundamental duty of a reporter to ask questions of political leaders — an argument Obama boosted by his refusal to take questions after his statement at the Rose Garden presser.  Didn’t the reporter at the Christie presser have the same duty, especially since the special session started in less than two days (today, actually)? Either both reporters were wrong to step outside the boundaries set in the presser, or both were correct and the two public officials in the wrong.

I’d also note that the CNN anchor here seems a lot more concerned about how this reporter got treated than the concern shown for Munro by his colleagues in the media in the aftermath of that Rose Garden presser.