Politico confirmed this morning:
Kristina Schake, Communications Director to the First Lady, emails to confirm this was a White House effort:
From the beginning of the administration, the White House has asked news outlets not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest. We have reminded outlets of this request in order to protect the privacy and security of these girls.
Refraining from photographing the first daughters makes sense, but there appear to be at least three news angles to this story. One, the first daughter’s spring break comes at a time when Americans are advised against traveling to Mexico due to the deteriorating security environment there. Two, the cost of the trip to the taxpayer. The scrubbed reports all agree that 25 Secret Service agents have accompanied the first daughter and her friends on the trip. American taxpayers are picking up those and undoubtedly other costs associated with this trip. Three, the White House’s relationship to and influence on the mainstream media.
The spring story isn’t the first time the Obama White House has sought to control media coverage. In February 2011, the White House banned a pool reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle for using a small video camera, at a media event at Facebook’s headquarters. In May 2011, the White House censored a mildly negative piece about the first lady in an obscure California newspaper. So far the White House’s efforts to scrub the spring break story have been mostly successful, with stories originating in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia all disappearing from the Web, while one in a Canadian publication remains online.
The Mexico visit is at least the 17th vacation or trip the first family has taken in the three years since President Obama’s inauguration.
– used as campaign props:
“…not to report on or photograph the Obama children when they are not with their parents and there is no vital news interest.”
Once again, we are stupidly letting the left define the terms of the discussion.
The story is NOT about Obozo’s offspring.
The story IS about TAXPAYERS’ MONEY – in other words, OUR money – and how it is being spent on Obama’s offspring.
Every story about taxpayers’ money – how it is being extracted from us, and where it is going – is a valid news story. WE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW!
And all this because a black man won an election? And I bet you all believe you are going to Heaven, right? Sure thing, bigots. All good bigots get to heaven – GOP heaven where Limbaugh rules your world.
If you’re going to come here with the goal of insulting everyone, at least strive for coherence. Your bigoted comment directed at Christians (I guess) makes no sense.
Bryan,
Whatever the motivation, Jimbo’s comments do reflect the Democratic Party’s racialism. Racialism – the politics of race, in particular – has been central to Democrats from the party’s inception nearly 200 years ago. Its in the party’s DNA and it won’t change anytime soon.
No, because a Marxist won the White House.
Why are *you* so fixated on his skin color?
Gee Jimbo, or is that dumbo, I’m not aware of anyone bringing up race on this. It appears to me that the issue is the white house causing supposedly independent and private organizations to scrub their websites to prevent any unfavorable or even neutral publicity from being distributed. I can’t imagine these same unbiased sites allowing Sarah Palin to request that their unfavorable comments about her daughter or son Trib be scrubbed. If the white house can get these websites to scrub simple things about her daughter’s trip(s) I wonder what else the white house will have these websites remove (can you say “fast and furious” or “Solyndra”?)?
For someone to so quickly latch onto non-present racism is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that liberals are projecting their own racism onto conservatives. The our current president is a miserable failure at what he does. This has nothing to do with race but everything to do with character, intelligence, and integrity (which Obama has none of).
actually jumbo bad people go to heaven, good DONT. you see Christ said there are none good. He also said that He had come for the sick and not the righteous….and if ya let Him He will give that same option to you..i understand your need to point out hypocrisy and try to play out the race card simply bc we don’t believe in the man’s policies. we believe he’s illegitimate president and his policies are out to destroy this country..he’s been aptly named the “food stamp president” correctly. and by the way if you wanna throw out the race card look no further than yourself
This ain’t Cry Pax! over at the NCR, Jimbo. This column is all that’s still fun about PJM. It has rules and its author is the Master and Commander. He’ll give you three strikes; hell, he’ll even give you a dropped third strike, but if you break the rules too many times, you walk the plank, Matey.
I continue to be astounded at this administration’s tone deafness. Sure, 7th and 8th graders should take a spring trip. Usually it is to DC, but since the Obama’s live there, why not somewhere historically significant?
Why not a 2 or 3 day trip to Gettysburg? Pennsylvania is going to be a battleground state, why not get some good publicity?
Mexico? OK, sure, you can pretend that there are some historical sites there, but just how many electoral votes does Mexico have?
If you take into account the some, 20 million illegals in this country, many of whom have been registered to vote (in maryland, all you have to do is get a driver’s license, those are freely given to illegals). ACORN, which is now operating under an umberella of names, is notorious for registering illegals. Just wait until November…and take a video camera to any precint that has large numbers of illegals, and see how many vote.
Rich Vail
Pikesville, Maryland
http://thevailspot.blogspot.com
Bryan, all excellent points.
The optics on this stink from every rational POV. The cost to taxpayers, the timing, the location, the fact that so many media reports have been so quickly and effectively “disappeared.”
Could BO-MO be more self-absorbed, elitist, supercilious and tone deaf?
They’ve sent 13 thirteen year-olds to gallivant in a foreign country, without parental supervision. Secret Service personnel must therefore be acting as chaperones and baby sitters as well as security. At taxpayer expense. Dandy.
Not to mention, of course, all the other bad optics. Why not send them somewhere in the US? Boost our own economy, instead of a foreign one. Why send them at all? There are tons of folks all over the country who can’t afford to fill the gas tank to get to work, let alone take a vacation. It’s tax season, so the same folks are trying to figure out how to make the mortgage and pay their federally mandated “fair share” to … what? Fund a junket for a gaggle of teens?
Who are these people? What color is the sky in their world?
but just how many electoral votes does Mexico have?
By dint of hundreds of thousands of Mexican nationals voting illegally in the US, the party of Obama hopes for more electoral votes than the law provides for.
– those in the media doing everything for Obama is that eventually he will do anything to them.
I agree with the Obama White House for once on this. The President’s daughter would be an incredible kidnap target in the land of drug cartels. Keep her travels on the qt. But this leaves the whole story of Obama’s own multiple vacations. He appears to be the best-rested President in US history! Too bad the rest of us can’t afford a vacation.
But wouldn’t it make even more sense if she didn’t go to an unsafe country in the first place!? What’s next, a shopping trip to Kabul?
What was that about the 1% again?
I am quite blown away by the acceptance of the American people for the antics of this president. At this time and place in history this spring break activity is nothing but a poke in the eye with a sharp stick of the very people who elected him. I do not care what political party this guy is, it is just wrong.
My wife asked me if we could do a “stay-cation”; I told her I could not afford to stay home with these gas prices and talk of lay-off’s and the president sends his beautiful daughter to Mexico alone without them? No matter what, she should not be their without one of her parents given the global climate of terrorism. Whatever happend to just saying no?
As another poster has said, given the economic climate, it is a shame that the taxpayers pick up the large tab for a presidential daughter’s “school” trip to a dangerous country at the same time that most U.S. workers have seen their pay shrink and vacations become harder to afford. That is if most US employees feel that they can take more than a long weekend as a vacation without worrying about the status of their positions.
The real story here is the scrubbing. Are we to believe that every single one of these news outlets took down the story due to a White House request? Or does the White House have a team of hackers that has been cracking media Web sites? Either way, this is very bad.
Bingo. What else can/will be/has been scrubbed?
“Refraining from photographing the first daughters makes sense”
No, it makes no sense at all. Like it or not, they’re public figures. And it’s the height of hypocrisy to try to hide them behind a wall of secrecy when the government demands that the rest of the citizenry stand for illegal, unconstitutional searches every time we board an airplane or walk into a government building.
And, when has the media ever had any respect for the privacy of minor children of elected officials?
“Two cases concerning underage drinking citations against Jenna Bush will be heard Friday by Austin Community Court Judge Elisabeth Earle, a spokeswoman for the city said.”
“Jenna, 19, is not required to appear in court for the hearings and will not be there, said City of Austin spokeswoman Patty Gonzales.”
“The hearing will begin at 9:30 a.m. CT (10:30 a.m. ET), Gonzales said.”
“Last month, Jenna pleaded not guilty to a charge of misrepresenting her age while trying to buy an alcoholic drink. Her twin sister, Barbara, was also involved in the incident.”–CNN, 2001
Never, that’s when.
They’ll splash trashy stories about minors all over the front pages…if they think it will make a Republican look bad. And, if the Bush or Palin families had asked the media to lay off, the media would have laughed in their faces.
“Here’s Jay Leno in early September: “Governor Palin announced over the weekend that her 17-year-old unmarried daughter is five months pregnant. And you thought John Edwards was in trouble before!” Similar gags were delivered by Conan O’Brien, Jimmy Kimmel and Craig Ferguson, among others. Hack work.”
“Letterman’s version had three targets — Alex Rodriguez for his sexual shenanigans, Sarah Palin for her abstinence-only politics and Bristol Palin for personifying the futility of that advocacy. All three are fair game…”–The New York Slimes
17 year old girls are fair game…if they’re the children of Republicans, but the Obama children are too precious to even be photographed unless a lefty wannabe tyrant okays it???
Screw the Obamas and their elitist crap, and screw the ultra-hypocritical media, and most of all, screw the God Damned governemnt.
18 is the age of majority in this country. If Obama had an adult daughter who was arrested, I’d want to hear about it.
http://www.montrealgazette.com/travel/Obama+daughter+spends+spring+break+Mexico/6323773/story.html
This story is a “big deal” because:
Oaxaca is a Zeta Cartel stronghold. Mexico is in the midst of a violent civil war; innocent bystanders are murdered daily. Both the US State Department and the State of Texas have issued travel advisories.
25 Secret Service agents are fully armed to protect the Mahlia Obama and her friends on vacation, however Jaime Zapata and his fellow federal agents are prohibited from carrying their sidearms while on official business and in the line of duty in Mexico.
Given there was just a large earthquake in Mexico (although not near Oaxaca), the White House is going to have a tough time quashing not just the story she is there on a school trip, but that they tried to quash the story.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/strong-long-79-quake-shakes-mexico-city-15963236#.T2ja_RFSRjY
So… who was the chaperone for these youths? Did they have no adult in charge? Was it then the secret service? Was the government reimbursed for the pay of an agent being essentially the Obamas’ nanny, thus, a personal servant?
How about the cost of the trip? Did they use AF1? Have they reimbursed the government for the cost of normal air travel as they are supposed to do? Security requires the government bear the cost of certain things, but Obama is required to pay the normal cost of air travel for reach non-official person aboard.
I get tired of seeing them use AF1 as a personal perk. It is not the President’s private plane. It is a flying war command center. It is supposed to be wherever he is in case of war. It is not supposed to be shuttling his wife and kids and dog around.
Imagine how bad it would be, if a nuclear device went off, triggered by NorK or Iran or Paki or something bought from Russia years back. We go to DefCon2 or even 1, and they need to get the President out of DC and… AF1 is in Mexico with his kids. Well, I guess there is AF2, but then where does the VP go? No plane, no backup President.
Yeah, yeah, I know. Small chance. But that small chance is the reason we have those very expensive planes in the first place, so our government is not decapitated. We are not playing tiddlywinks here.
Marc, that’s my other problem. “Sure, honey, we’ll spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars so you can have the kewlest Spring Break evah!”
Not to mention: what is a 13-year-old doing on Spring Break!?
This only goes to show the power the Whitehouse has over the media. It shows they can, and do, control the output, as well as making anything vanish that they want to vanish.
You poor Americans are lost. When a sitting president can get away with this type of taxpayer abuse, there is no end to what he may try. I’m sure he’s already working on his 3rd term.
The Obama Family is just flaunting their political nouveau riche ability to pull stunts like this. His wife’s trip with assembled entourage to Spain on a big Boeing aircraft (at least I hope it wasn’t an Airbus or an Ilyushin) is another example.
Those who voted for him ought to be ashamed for the Obama’s…..but they’d do the same thing. They, like the Obama’s, have no class. It’s all “Look At Meeeee!”….bling and ‘stick it to th’ Man!