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Contrast how the three White House correspondents covered the President's decision to sign into law a bill to pay for the government to keep operating through the end of this fiscal year, even though it contains earmarked spending, the kind he voted against this time last year when he was still Candidate Obama.
NBC handled the story briefly, assigning Savannah Guthrie to a stand-up in which she noted the signing ceremony took place "behind closed doors." ABC's Jake Tapper caught the White House in a pair of hypocritical soundbites--Barack Obama as candidate: "I will go through the entire federal budget, page by page, line by line;" Robert Gibbs, press secretary: "I think it is reasonable to assume that the President has not gone through each and every item in the legislation." In fairness, Tapper did point out that those disputed earmarks "constitute roughly 2% of the bill."
Now consider how CBS' Chip Reid, unfairly, characterizes that same 2%. "He signed a bill stuffed with porkbarrel spending…a $410bn domestic spending bill, 1,100 pages loaded with about 8,500 pet projects known as earmarks." Come on, Chip! Stuffed and loaded? Perhaps "peppered" and "sprinkled" were the verbs you were looking for.
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