Buy his own plane ticket.

I've always figured that part of the reason Bush's favorable coverage lasted as long as it did was because the press was afraid to cross the Bush administration.

The other side of that is I think one of the reasons anti-GOP stories get buried while anti-Democratic stories get you promotes is because Democrats have tried so hard to be fair and nice to the press. Ask Bill Clinton how that turned out for him.

I think Democrats need to push back and "punish" the press particularly when negative coverage is just embarassing, crass, frivolous, or downright false. I wish Al Gore had been willing to do that.

But maybe Lizza's profile (how many have read the profile, versus how many have seen the cover?) was very likely 'insufficiently flattering'...

Whatever. Back to business as usual. The New Yorker will loyally line up for Obama as we head to the conventions. If Obama doesn't like Lizza, then there are only about a half dozen others at the New Yorker who will be eager to author emabarassingly supportive pro-Obama propaganda.

What is the probability of a disparagingly anti-McCain New Yorker cover in the next eight weeks? Something exceeding 1.00, I suspect.

Read Lizza's article...this is par for the course. The agent for change has rapidly become the lesser of two evils. Far lesser, granted, but evil (in the political, not nec. personal context) nonetheless.

Isn't that the name of a flash gordon character?

complain all you want about the candidate of change manipulating the media. SO WHAT? Hello? which cave did YOU just crawl out from under?

I'm glad he excluded them. Who knows what stupid caricatures would have come out next. Let them buy their own tickets, they care so much.

geez...quit being so self-defeating. I suppose he should be OK with whatever crap the media wants to put out about him. Right. Fat chance.

Finally a democratic candidate who knows how to fight. What a freaking surprise.

NEWS FLASH: Obama is trying to win the election. Media coverage is part of it. Imagine that!

"Obama campaign taking revenge?" For gosh sake I hope not. That would be so...so...political!

But it's my name.

his own barbecue.

Perhaps he and the New Yorker "missed" the irony of the snub and the terrific satirical point Obama was making by destroying the right-winger myth that Obama only excludes far right press from covering him. Don't they get it? I did...

The War Room coverage of Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki's comments in support of the Obama timetable for withdrawal of troops? That seems alot more important than whether Lizza got a seat on the airplane or not. Really, other than his mother, who truly cares?

The New Yorker is irrelevant except in pseudo-intellectual, East Coast circles. Honestly, very few people truly care about that moronic cover and very few people could care less whether the New Yorker, for God's sake, didn't get a seat on the plane. "Manipulating" the press? The New Yorker is not "the press." It's a vanity rag for elite, liberal bombasts. And I say that as a liberal. Did the Washington Post, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, NY Times, Time mag, Newsweek get seats? If so, then what is the problem?

but it did discuss Obama's climb up the Chicago political machine and talked to some people, who had helpd him, who he later stepped on, most of whom accept it as "just politics."

I suspect they weren't eager for other journos having access to Lizza's fund of knowledge.

FWIW, Lizza didn't draw or commission the cover.

The New yorker should be able to cover the cost.

... on Straight Talk Airways is okey dokey for the media covering McCain, no? Why the hand-wringing is Obama decides to do the same?

While you're waiting at the Delta economy class boarding gate at O'Hare.

but to exclude the guy from your press-gaggle on your little "World Tour" sends shivers up this progressive's spine.

on his tour bus. Obama doesn't need to lie down and take shit from anybody. Good for him..Unfair go cry to faux news

I am going to subscribe to the New Yorker precisely because of this, which sounds like the kind of thing the current administration would do.

Press censorship is no laughing matter. Those who think it's funny that the campaign kept the New Yorker writer off the plane may be too young to recall Richard Nixon and his enemies list, which included many media outlets.

I may hate Fox News but I defend its right to present what it wants unless it's libelous.

Freedom of the press is one of the hallmarks of democracy. And when the press lets politicians dictate what they say, as has too often been true with the Iraq war, we all pay for it in the long run.

Was anyone from Oprah magazine there? If not, I protest. That's as much "the press" as the New Yorker. Nothing against that mag; I sometimes read it.

I guess I can thank George Bush and his 8 years of handpicked media exclusion for not even feeling guilty that I don't care one fig in hell about Lizza's Little Snub.

I love that pathetic "but what about the change" artillery critics think they're firing. Obama is "change" all right: Finally a Democrat who isn't going to roll over and beg for a treat by a media outlet willing to so disgracefully disrespect him to sell its wares.

Everyone who has been so insistent that the New Yorker only reaches a minute subset of snobby New York intellectuals, and therefore, the cover's ersatz satire/parody was right on target to reach its ultra-limited highbrow audience can NOT now turn around and insist that, with only 40 press seats available, the reporter from this same select, elitist magazine has rights to a seat on the press plane.

Did he have a seat, and they took it away? No. So what is the big deal.

You think McCain is offering seats to Kos, Arianna and Keith Olbermann?

Anyway, New Yorker's circulation puts it near the BOTTOM of the top 100 magazines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magazine_circulation

and with newspapers, major networks, cable networks, some wire folks, and news magazines dedicated to news/politics, frankly, New Yorker would be far down on the list of any person with half a brain who is trying to intelligently assign 40 seats.

And let's face reality.

Some of the press who get a seat on the plane are a given. The New York Times reporter assigned to the Obama campaign is going, as is the AP person, and so on.

But if with only 40 seats to work with, and you're the Obama person in charge of seats on the press plane, and you actually have some wiggle room on a few seats, are you going to pick someone from, for example, Vanity Fair magazine, or the Huffington Post website, both of whom have been favorable to Obama, or are you going to pick Salon's Joan Walsh or Ryan Lizza from the New Yorker, who have not?

Give 'em some credit for not being idiots.

Excuse me, but in all the effort to gin up drama, and create fakey frictions and intrigues, how about someone in War Room using some basic common sense.