Justin Farmer is a reporter for Atlanta's WSB-TV, and he's exactly the kind of local-news reporter Barack Obama's been looking for -- the kind that's too star-struck to be objective. Farmer talked of Obama with the traditional media tingles on the station website (since removed, but preserved by Politico): " I took in the man himself, this man, President Barack Obama. Regardless of one’s political leanings, there’s no doubt this is a gifted and complex man. Think about what he ponders in any given day?”
Farmer also boasted that while Obama is shifting into reelection mode, he was “carefully chosen by the administration, along with a few others, to take his talking points back to Atlanta.” Being happy you were "carefully chosen" to carry talking points? That's the line most editors might want to unpublish.
Politico noted it was quite a contrast to Brad Watson of Dallas angering the president by asking why he was so unpopular in Texas. But wait, there's more:
-- “I admit as he was answering one of my questions, I did look carefully at his face. (Our chairs were oddly placed almost uncomfortably close.) I pondered the responsibility, the challenges this one man bears.”
-- “I love that the president serves his people. Naturally, there is some required formality as a head of state, but our forefathers brilliantly wrote the Constitution to demand that our president, grand in stature and notoriety, merely be here at his/her core, to serve the American people.”
-- “It is the President’s job to preserve and protect a nation of laws that affords all of us a fair shot in the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness. Being in the building that houses the man required to carry out that grand task was a thrill.”
Someone needs to inform this reporter that President Obama isn't in the "pursuing liberty" business. He's in the 'pursuing European-style socialism" business.
