Last week, President Obama's eldest daughter went on a "spring break" vacation with a few of her school chums to tourist safe haven Mexico, along with a contingent of 25 Secret Service agents. As usual, this latest example of the Obama's pursuit of budget vacations has raised questions from some about just how much money this latest jaunt is going to cost the taxpayers. Also as usual, the objection that the children of the President should be left out of the news whenever possible has come up, disregarding the question of whether or not the President and First Lady actually live up to that standard themselves.
What was unusual about this latest news story is that once the fact of the First Daughter's vacation was reported at a number of major online news sites, the stories began to disappear. Links to the story suddenly went nowhere or were redirected to pages that had nothing to do with the vacation story. After a few days the White House admitted that it had requested the story be removed, a request with which most of the news outlets complied. Given that The New York Times on at least one occasion actually denied a Bush White House request to not publish a news story on national security grounds, this new concern with going along with White House requests to kill stories is pathetic, especially given the essentially unscandalous nature of the vacation story.
So what does this mean for the future? I doubt that any of the White House political sharpies are following my humble little blog, but I think there's some ways that the White House could use this new ability to make news more invisible. Why limit the news embargo on the Presidential Kids to stuff like vacations or school activities and such? How about making Malia an intern in the White House press office, and let her announce news that might be embarrassing to the administration, and then declare that coverage of this issue is off limits, because it's part of Malia's extra-curricular school activities. Sure, it's a huge stretch, but the liberal media has shown every willingness and ability to play blind, deaf and dumb when it comes to protecting the Obama Administration. Who knows, with Malia leading the charge, the Friday Night Document Dump might finally become a thing of the past.
