Damned if you emote, damned if you don't

"It's hopeless, Mr. Spock, the humans are simply prisoners of their hard-wired perceptions, though we agree that the instinctive behavioral patterns of Journo Erectus is ... fascinating."

I kid the reporters, but the political press wasted no time in following its all too predictable script. This morning, the New York Times headlined the president's news conference thusly: "Obama Shows Emotion, With Political Consequences." Reporter Michael Shear wrote, "The rap on President Obama is that he’s too professorial, too cool, too prone to dissecting a problem logically and then attempting to explain it to the public. If that’s the case, then it wasn’t Mr. Obama who stood in front of the news media on Wednesday." It was ... President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet of The West Wing in full fire-and-brimstone mode. As widely reported, Obama thundered away at the Do Nothing Congress yesterday. The White House press corps was duly shocked & awed. OMG, they gasped, he ... he emoted!

Unlike the fictional President Bartlet, however, Obama doesn't get to live happily ever after (or even have a commercial break). Instead, his emoting only provokes the terrible, inevitable "BUT" (cue the scary organ music). Shear writes, but will Obama's uncharacteristic emoting push "each side further into a corner" and stall the debt negotiations? This from a news media that previously slapped Mr. Obama around for being too Spock-like. Our Vulcan president can't catch a break, can he? You can be sure that if the president had played to type, the headlines would have read: "Is Obama's Coolness Hindering Debt Talks?"

Still, one aspect of the Obama story is certain to have a happy ending. One day, historians will study the habits of Journo Erectus and laugh uproariously -- just before they relegate them to the footnotes.