-By Warner Todd Huston
CNN was quite taken with the video that Obama’s campaign put out showing the President getting a little weepy after he won his second bid for the White House. The video was “amazing,” even “remarkable” said the CNN hosts who gushed over the President’s tears. But CNN wasn’t quite so taken with GOP House Speaker John Boehner’s tears two years ago.
CNN’s Brianna Keilar was nearly emotional herself over the President’s tears saying, “So, Soledad, a remarkable moment there. And we’re just seeing this now.” CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien then replied, “Wow, ‘No Drama Obama’ gets a little dramatic and emotional.”
The pair went on at some length over the President’s display.
But, as Matt Hadro points out, CNN was not nearly as effusive with its wows when Republican John Boehner got a little teary-eyed after he was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives in 2010.
In 2010, CNN’s Keilar essentially dismissed Boehner’s outburst as merely “emotional.”
“And Boehner is someone who gets emotional often. I would say that he probably has shed more tears on the House floor certainly in the time I’ve been here than any other member of Congress I’ve seen, but he was talking last night in one of the more dramatic moments of the evening,” Keilar then said.
CNN was clearly moved far more by Obama’s tears than Boehner’s.
As noted, Obama’s crying jag was filmed during a private appearance with his Chicago campaign workers and was only revealed to the world by his own campaign.
The Old Media’s White House press pool was barred from the event, causing some of them to question the decisions of restricting the media’s access and releasing the video at all. After all, if the meeting was private enough to bar the media, why at the same time release the video?
Naturally, White House spokesman Jay Carney defended the seeming contradiction, saying that it was a meeting only with his campaign team yet it was “perfectly appropriate” that the campaign release the video.
See Newsbusters for a transcript of the CNN coverage.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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