The embedded press

Good first person report on attending a staged Bush “event” by a pundit from a Chicago suburban daily http://www.dailyherald.com/opinion/constable.asp?id=192308

Corralled, contained, controlled and coffee-deprived under the thumb of the Secret Service, the local media covering President Bush’s speech Monday in Chicago can’t even get permission to go to the bathroom, let alone ask the president a question.
So — based entirely on what I am allowed to see and hear at the National Restaurant Association Show — I have to conclude that President Bush is a warm, witty lover of freedom, who is wildly popular among the people of our nation.

The 2,000 or so restaurant conventioneers who pack the McCormick Place auditorium interrupt Bush’s speech and question-and-answer period more than two dozen times with applause. . . .

Questioners picked from the audience occasionally pepper their questions with comments such as “You’re doing a fine job,” or pleas for the president’s brother Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to become the next leader of the free world. . . .

A woman, who apparently disagrees, begins the Q&A session by shouting out, “Where are the weapons of mass destruction?” Bush ignores her, and the word-for-word official transcript from whitehouse.gov records her question only as “audience interruption.”
. . . .
But this is not an arena for dissent and debate. I am here to repeat, not report. I should have known what I was in for when I got my press pass. “White House Press Pool,” it reads. Underneath, in small letters, are the words “Property of U.S. Government.”
On this day, we certainly are.