Dear Barack, Don't Get Mad, I Was Just Doing My Job -- Love, Ed Henry, CNN

March 26th, 2009 2:39 AM

There is a somewhat amusing article on CNN.com right now. It's not amusing for its wit but for the fact that CNN and Senior White House Correspondent Ed Henry think they need to explain away the "tough exchange" that Henry and Obama engaged in during Tuesday's press conference. Also amusing is the fact that Henry seems to be apologizing to The One for simply doing his job. Finally, it's amusing for the fact that CNN and Henry think they are the news along with the president. It's narcissistic and revealing all at once. On top of all that it is amusing for whom CNN obviously felt the need to explain themselves to because for the last day the left has been outraged over Henry's gall at asking the president a simple question.

If you'll recall, on Tuesday (March 24) Henry asked Obama why he waited days to react to the outrage over the AIG bonuses that Treasury Secretary Geithner wrote into the bailout plan. Avoiding the question, Obama replied with a surly "Because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak." This exchange had the extremists at DailyKos and the profane folks at Wonkette as well as the rest of the left-O-sphere worked up into a frothy lather over Henry's low down, hornswoggling ways. How DARE he ask the Obammessiah a pointed question! Why it's sacrilege, surely!

So CNN has dutifully whimpered no mas and tried to smooth the waters with this odd article explaining away why that darned ol' Ed Henry had the temerity to ask The One a question. It's an obvious effort to appease the gods of the left-O-sphere and other zealots of the Obamanation. Henry must want a talisman to warn off the lefty heebie-jeebies awfully bad to go this far.

In his mea culpa magnum opus -- call it a maxima culpa, if you will -- Henry explains at some length what led up to his deciding to ask the infamous question. He then insists that he "waited patiently" on The One as the president danced around previous questions before patting himself on the back because he went on to "pounce with a sharp follow-up."

Oh, it was scary, kids. With all eyes upon him and such, the tension mounted...

The pressure was on now because the president had called on me. Someone handed me a microphone, millions were watching, and it's scary to think about changing topic in a split second because you might get flustered and screw up.

But it's fun to gamble and like any good quarterback (though I was never athletic enough to actually play the position), I decided to call an audible.

And then he asked that question. But for the next day, Henry took a pounding from the moonbats and this seems to have shocked him. So, what is the upshot?

What do I think? I've got no hard feelings toward the president and I assume he feels the same, but I can't worry about that. I was doing my job -- and he was doing his.

Really? No hard feelings, eh? And we should care.... why? Since when do reporters ever come out with a more than 700 word piece to explain why they asked the president a question? Did any reporter ever feel it necessary to offer a mea culpa or an "explanation" after having asked George W. Bush a "tough" question? Or did they rather do a few victory laps with the hearty back slapping of colleagues and moonbats alike, defiant in their revelry?

Ah, but not this time. You see, this time we are talking about The One and anyone asking Speaks-with-TelePrompTer a tough question gets the whole tribe up in arms. So, Henry hastened to his word processor to slam out an apologia that is as much asking his pals on the extreme left to stop hitting him as it is trying to get them all to understand that he was just "doing his job."

In any case, with the moonbatteries out to score a direct hit on him, now Ed Henry knows what it's like belonging to ABC's Jake Tapper's club!