Nice gesture, Helen, but it's too little, too late

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.

“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.

“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well--for the town halls, for the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.”

When Helen Thomas starts assailing a Democrat administration, something's not quite right. Too bad the grande dame of the Washington press corps waited this long to recognize what many of us noticed during the primaries: Obama has used the press to do his bidding. He used them to take down Hillary, and then co-opted them during the campaign to demonize McCain/Palin. All the while, the considerable investigative powers of the mainstream media remained silent about Obama's more than questionable associations, his background as a "community organizer (i.e. socialist), and his lack of bona fides as an executive. Now Thomas and company are shocked to find Obama is manipulating the press with unheard of audacity? Sorry, Helen, the rest of us poor schmucks out here saw him for what he was a long time ago.