Did You Know...

It’s time for the MSM to put its drool buckets in permanent storage.

In the past month, we’ve had:

– The Pleasanton (CA) Weekly bullied by the White House press shop over a benign article that irked the administration because it made Michelle Obama look snooty.

– The San Francisco Chronicle punished by the White House because a print pool reporter used a cell phone to record video of protesters at an Obama Bay Area fundraiser.

- A WFAA Texas reporter dressed down by the president for having the audacity to…interrupt.

And now, the Boston Herald has been spanked by the White House for…running a front-page op-ed by Mitt Romney:

The White House Press Office has refused to give the Boston Herald full access to President Obama’s Boston fund-raiser today, in e-mails objecting to the newspaper’s front page placement of a Mitt Romney op-ed, saying pool reporters are chosen based on whether they cover the news “fairly.”

“I tend to consider the degree to which papers have demonstrated to covering the White House regularly and fairly in determining local pool reporters,” White House spokesman Matt Lehrich wrote in response to a Herald request for full access to the presidential visit.

“My point about the op-ed was not that you ran it but that it was the full front page, which excluded any coverage of the visit of a sitting US President to Boston. I think that raises a fair question about whether the paper is unbiased in its coverage of the President’s visits,” Lehrich wrote.

But Lehrich said the Herald wasn’t purposefully barred from the press pool, saying local pool duty by the Boston Globe was arranged earlier with the White House Correspondents Association. And Lehrich insisted the Herald may yet be allowed into Obama events.

“As we have in the past — including the multiple occasions on which the Herald has supplied local pool reporters — we will continue to consider the Herald for local pool duty for future visits,” Lehrich wrote.

Obama is in town today to raise money for his 2012 re-election campaign. His afternoon speech in the South End’s Cyclorama is open to all media, but only a selected pool can attend other aspects of his fund-raiser. Pool reporters must share all their material with other press. The Herald has been bypassed for pool duty during Obama’s last two visits despite asking the White House to be the local pool reporter.

Touchy. Touchy.

The slobbering love affair may at last be coming to an end — at least at the local and state level…