Peter Canellos

“The New York Times Co. is threatening to shut down the Boston Globe and deprive the world of its hard-hitting brand of journalism,” James Taranto sarcastically noted in his Tuesday “Best of the Web Today” for the Wall Street Journal's online “Opinion Journal” page, mockingly citing “an example of what would be lost is a column by Peter S. Canellos, the paper's Washington bureau chief, titled 'In a Stroke of Brilliance, Obama Defies Easy Caricature.'”

Unlike recent Presidents, Canellos contended in his weekly “National Perspectives” column in the Globe's news pages, “Obama, so far, seems to occupy a place in the popular culture beyond humor. Ridicule doesn't touch him. His personality defies easy categorization.” Even the “few running gags to emerge from the Obama administration -- aides not paying their taxes, Treasury officials rewarding fat-cats” -- rebounds to Obama's benefit, Canellos argued, as he effused: “The only one that pertains to the President himself is the straight-faced devotion he inspires. Obama may not actually be perfect, but so many poor souls out there think he is.”

An observation about the press corps?