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Ryan Chittum takes a look at yesterday’s sit-down between President Obama and five bloggers and concludes that the bloggers “didn’t exactly cover themselves with glory.”

I guess that’s true. But I wouldn’t really blame the bloggers. Some of their questions were good, some were lame, and some were in between. But who’s done better? Who can do better? Pretty much any big time politician — and Obama’s as big time as they come — has heard every question before and knows exactly how to answer them. They filibuster, they distract, they offer up platitudes, and they move on. There’s pretty much zero chance of anyone getting anything newsworthy out of a guy like Obama unless he feels like making news. This is just life in our modern media-saturated age.

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And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

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