Now, I saw the press briefing where White House press secretary Scott McClellan went off on reporters trying to ask questions about whether the White House had brought Harriet Miers’ religion into play in order to sell her to conservatives, and I thought McClellan looked foolish. The White House clearly tried to use Miers’ religion as a selling point and reporters were right to ask about it. But forgive me if I laugh at the indignation they expressed to Howard Kurtz yesterday:

When CBS correspondent John Roberts asked about the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers at a White House briefing last week, he expected a boilerplate answer.
Instead, press secretary Scott McClellan lectured the reporter: “Let’s talk about the way you’re approaching things . . . I would encourage you — I know you don’t necessarily want to do this — but to look at her qualifications and record.” Moments later, Roberts accused McClellan of “attacking me.”
Roberts said in an interview that President Bush’s spokesman “has adopted this siege mentality in which the best way to deflect the question is to attack the questioner. I’m not quite sure who he’s playing to — maybe the segment of the Republican Party that believes we’re a bunch of liberals who have our own agenda.”

I know. With some 80 percent of reporters voting for Democrats, we’d be crazy to think that, right?

“There’s been an attempt to put reporters on the spot and question the motivation of reporters,” said David Gregory, NBC’s White House correspondent. “It is irritating, and I for one think it’s an attempt by the White House to change the focus from what is a legitimate question to what the talking point is. It’s an effort to cast the media as out for red meat.”

First of all, the attempt to change the focus from the question to the talking point is every flack’s job. Second, the media are out for red meat. The red meat in question here is the media’s glee whenever a fight breaks out among conservatives. In his column today, Kurtz spotlights David Frum’s opposition to Harriet Miers, and the New York Times throws it’s op-ed page open to Ramesh Ponnuru’s criticisms of Bush. I love how we suddenly become credible when we’re criticizing the administration. Otherwise we’re accused of just repeating our Republican talking points.

[Washington Post reporter Jim] VandeHei asked McClellan whether he was denying that White House officials had touted Miers’s faith and evangelical church membership to conservative activists. “You’re putting words in my mouth,” McClellan said.
VandeHei said later that he was “offended” by the response and that McClellan was engaging in “distortion.”

Offended by the very notion that a reporter would ask a leading question? What a thin-skinned press corps we have.