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Conservative radio host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday accused President Barack Obama of abusing members of the media like "battered" women and prostitutes -- that he had a one-night stand with and then left them because "he got what he wanted."

Ingraham told the hosts of Fox & Friends that "you can see the whole Obama machine begin to crumble" if members of the press began to doubt the president's assertion that Republicans should get most of the blame for refusing to avert automatic spending cuts in the so-called sequester.

Fox News host Alisyn Camerota noted that Obama had recently asked the media to leave a meeting with members of the National Governors Association.

"It's like the battered press syndrome," Ingraham opined. "These people are so in love -- many of them, not all of them -- so in love that, like, 'Oh, he's telling me to leave? I guess that means he loves me.' I mean, at some point -- the battered press syndrome -- you have to shake them from this and say, 'You guys have been used and played and manipulated.'"

"Should we tell them he's just not that into you?" Camerota asked.

"Well, he used them," Ingraham explained. "It's like the one-night stand that lasted for four years. He got re-elected, he got what he wanted. 'So, sweetheart, I'll leave your payment on the table and I'm gone.' I'm sorry, but it's embarrassing."

(h/t: Media Matters)

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Fresh off of the heels of the media complaining about their lack of access to President Obama and his golf outing with Tiger Woods and with Chris Wallace complaining that his was the only Sunday show where the new White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough refused to make an appearance last week, the panel on their Saturday joke of a media watchdog show, Fox News Watch, decided to continue on with the carping with a good portion of the jeering done by one of their faux Democrats, Kirsten Powers.

It appears that this is just a rerun of the what the viewers were treated to on the same show last week, where, as News Corpse took note of, we were hearing some very similar complaints out of the same culprits:

Fox earned a ninth place showing by having been called on for questions fourteen times. That is only two fewer nods than CNN and the New York Times received. And if Fox can be described as having been shunned, then the Washington Post, USA Today, and NPR were victims of blatant and deliberate neglect since they came in even lower than Fox at tenth, eleventh, and thirteenth.

Nevertheless, Fox seems to be the only news outlet that is complaining about their treatment by the President. They devoted a segment of their Fox News Watch program to whining that they aren’t getting enough attention, poor things. Host Jon Scott started the bitch session by crying “Why does the president not like to call on us?” Jumping in without being recognized was Fox’s fake Democrat Kirsten Powers who shot back “Because he doesn’t want to be embarrassed. When Ed Henry asks questions to Jay Carney, inevitably Jay Carney ends up looking stupid because he doesn’t know how to answer the question. He’s used to pushing people around.” And she’s supposed to be the voice of the left on Fox’s fair and balanced roster.

With friends like Kirsten Powers who needs enemas? And that is a perfect illustration of why Obama ought to start shunning Fox News. It has never been a credible journalistic operation. It is an unabashed agent of the Republican Party whose only purpose is to bash the President and support the right-wing agenda.

Meanwhile, over at Dan Abrams' rag, Mediaite, Fox and Politico, or as Charlie Pierce calls Politico, The Tiger Beat on the Potomac, were being treated as though they actually have any legitimate complaints about lack of access to the White House and that somehow preventing them from acting like journalists, if that's what either of those organizations actually decided to do one of these days.

Fox’s Kirsten Powers To Panel: Chris Wallace ‘Should Be Proud’ Obama Won’t Go On His Show:

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Following last week's slaughter of 20 children in Connecticut, President Barack Obama on Wednesday held his first-ever press conference about gun control, but the press corps insisted on asking at least the first six questions about the so-called fiscal cliff.

The president took to the podium in the the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room -- which was named after a staffer who was shot during an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan -- to say that he had tasked Vice President Joe Biden with spearheading an effort to recommend policy changes like banning assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition clips.

"It won't be easy, but that can't be an excuse not to try," Obama told reporters. "And I'm not going to be able to do it by myself. Ultimately, if this effort is to succeed, it's going to require the help of the American people. It's going to require all of you."

With that, the president invited the press corps to ask questions, beginning with The Associated Press' Ben Feller, who wanted to know, "Are we likely to go over the cliff?"

In fact, reporters ignored the Connecticut shootings for at least the first six questions, until White House staff insisted that the next question be about the topic at hand and USA Today's David Jackson asked why Biden's effort would be any different than other ineffective Washington, D.C. commissions.

"The idea that we would say, 'This is terrible, this is a tragedy, never again,' and we don't have the sustained attention span to be able to get this done over the next several months doesn't make sense," the president insisted. "I have more confidence in the American people than that."

In the final question of the press conference, ABC's Jake Tapper noted that the president had done little about gun violence during his first term.

"This is not the first issue of horrific gun violence of your four years," Tapper said. "Where have you been?"

"I've been president of the United States, dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, an auto industry on the verge of collapse, two wars," Obama explained. "I don't think I've been on vacation. And so, I think all of us have to do some reflection."

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Bill O'Reilly apparently didn't take very kindly to Rick Sanchez making this comment after Fox was awarded a front row seat in the briefing room for the White House Press corps.

SANCHEZ: I understand The Associated Press. I even understand Bloomberg. But don't you have you to be a news organization to get that seat?

O'Reilly responded by attacking CNN for their terrible ratings in a game of "my ratings are bigger than yours are" and wrote off Sanchez's comments as just him being jealous of the mighty Bill O'Reilly and his huge ratings.

I won't dispute Bill-O that CNN's ratings stink along with the better part of their programming but as Rachel Maddow noted when O'Reilly went after her, higher ratings don't make you right.

I find it rather amusing that O'Reilly and Sanchez are going after each other since I don't consider either of them "journalists". Rachel Maddow doesn't deserve to be lumped in with either of them.

Sadly as a whole all of our corporate news shows with a few exceptions that are too far and few between sadly, are very long on gossip, distraction, fake balance and just a whole lot of crap that bears little or no resemblance to actual journalism. Fox of course being the worst of them where it's just all Republican propaganda all the time and they don't even try to hide it. Which is why of course you'll never see much more than a "my ratings are bigger than yours" rather than any kind of substantive response out of O'Reilly when someone lets one slip and points out how horrid they are. He can't make one and never will.

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Rick Sanchez states the truth on CNN about just how bad ClusterFox is with getting a move up to the front row in the briefing room for the White House press corps. They didn't get Helen Thomas' seat, the AP did, but they still got a seat in the front row. Much to the horror of his cohorts Ed Henry who voted to allow Fox to move up and Brook Baldwin, Rick Sanchez does something I'll bet he's backpedaling on later, he tells the truth that Fox is not a news organization.

I read something a while back where Fox won a law suit and if memory serves it was from Canada and they won it because they said they were an "entertainment" network and not news. I keep wondering how they can keep the word "news" as part of their marketing after that happened but haven't had the time to look into it. Maybe some of our readers here can fill me in if they've followed it.

Anyway, here's the transcript of Sanchez's slam and Ed Henry's lame excuse for pretending like any of their so called "straight reporters" deserve their colleagues giving them a move up with their seating arrangements. To be honest the whole thing looks like a game of who's the most popular in high school to me in the first place. Where Helen was seated didn't matter a whole hell of a lot when the Bush administration refused to call on her for years. I would imagine it's not going to matter any more with Gibbs or whoever takes his place either.

The Villagers do love their popularity contests though, don't they?

Transcript via CNN below the fold.

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Here's yet another example of why our beltway Villager White House press corps is completely useless. Here's Urban Radio's White House correspondent April Ryan talking to Greta Van Susteren on Fox about the Shirley Sherrod firing.

Ryan: But I'm going to say this. Greta there is a lot of blame to be laid. I'm going to start as a reporter who started out in this business going from the basics, the facts and learning how to put the full context of the story out there. It started shoddy, the reporting was done shoddily and I'm sorry, the full context was not put out and then yesterday when the tape started coming out the full forty three minutes, we understood that it was about racial redemption and reconciliation.

Now some say, maybe she shouldn't have said it. Some say maybe she should have but either way the context of the story was not put out at the very beginning and that's where it starts. There is blame to be laid in almost every facet. You know you can say the NAACP, they're having a meeting this evening. They're very upset about the fact that they had to retract a statement and all the racial aspects that's going on. Then you have the White House having to retract. I mean so many people are involved in this now and it started from shoddy reporting.

While what she said is true, the problem is what she didn't say -- Fox News and Andrew Breitbart. April if you care about "shoddy reporting", don't go on one of the first shows to do the shoddy reporting and complain about how the story wasn't reported properly without bothering to mention that pesky little fact. The story went from Breitbart's site to Fox News' web site straight to O'Reilly, then to the show she's appearing on now, to Hannity. Pitiful.

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Howard Kurtz just couldn't resist taking another whack at Helen Thomas for the second week in a row for her statement that the Israelis should get out of Palestine and go home, which led to her resignation. While I don't agree with what Helen said, it's really pathetic to watch the Villager's paint her as "whacky" and the "crazy uncle" of the White House Press Corps. Helen made a whole lot of people in the Villager establishment uncomfortable with the questions she asked and wasn't always polite when she asked them, but I'll take that any day of the week before one of them worrying about pissing someone off because they might not get invited to the next beltway cocktail party or the person they're asking questions of might not want to appear in their next "exclusive" interview on one of their bobble head shows on Sundays.

Howard Kurtz actually had the gall to ask if it's "the role of the journalists, even opinion journalists, to denounce the war in Iraq, to accuse the administration of killing civilians?" Howard, if it's not the role of journalists to ask those sorts of questions, then who else do you think is going to do it?

The woman had more journalistic integrity than any of this bunch and if we had a few more Helen Thomases over the years and a few less beltway Villagers posing as journalists that were less worried about looking "whacky" and being disrespectful to the powers that be and more worried about doing their jobs, perhaps we would not be entangled in two endless occupations in the Middle East right now.

Although Kurtz and his panel did admit that we could use more journalists holding the establishment's feet to the fire like Helen did, they did their best to paint her as either extremist and out of the mainstream or slightly senile as they did it. And why in the hell does Howard Kurtz think that Fox Noise hate talker Sean Hannity is someone that deserves to be responded to or that his opinion is worthy of debate? Kurtz was the one leading the way with how this discussion was framed and he really should be ashamed of himself. Howard, when you figure out what it means to be a journalist yourself, you can rightfully criticize Helen. I don't expect that to be happening any time soon.

KURTZ: Joining us now to talk about this sad finale for Helen Thomas and what it says about Washington journalism, Dana Milbank, who writes "The Washington Sketch" column for "The Washington Post"; Lynn Sweet, Washington bureau chief of "The Chicago Sun-Times" and a columnist for PoliticsDaily.com; and Jeffrey Goldberg, national correspondent for "The Atlantic."

Dana Milbank, has the White House Press Corps, where Helen Thomas' views have been no secret, been protecting her for years?

DANA MILBANK: Well, protecting here in the sense that there was a great deal of fondness for her because of her history, because she was such an institution. I don't think she's ever said anything quite like this before. I think people will tolerate a stand against Israel as distinct from an anti-Semitic stance, basically, against Jews, which we heard her say there, so it was just shocking to hear that. Now, it wasn't surprising that she held those views, it was shocking that she actually said it, I think.

KURTZ: Lynn Sweet, I know you like and admire Helen Thomas. Do you think she was cut some slack because she was in her '80s?

LYNN SWEET: Well, no, because she ended up losing her job over this --

(CROSSTALK)

KURTZ: But before this incident?

SWEET: Well, before this incident, she was a singular person in the White House. People might not know it, but organizations are given seats in the press room, as you know, Howie, not individuals. And she had that seat as a recognition of her career as a trailblazer. So, yes, she was cut slack.

KURTZ: Well, because she had worked for UPI --

SWEET: She had this seat.

KURTZ: -- but then she was a columnist, which ordinarily would not warrant you a front-row seat.

SWEET: Ordinarily, it wouldn't warrant you a seat. You always would have entree. You know, Dana could go to the press room anytime he wants, he just stands on the side. It was very special for Helen to have the seat that was part of her identity.

MILBANK: ABC, NBC, CBS --

SWEET: Right.

MILBANK: -- Helen Thomas.

KURTZ: Dana stands on the side of a lot of events.

(LAUGHTER)

SWEET: Right, which is why the debate over who gets the seat is really not one that is parallel to Helen's seat.

KURTZ: The debate over the seat is of interest to about 10 people, and I wish the media would get off of it.

Jeffrey Goldberg, were you surprised by the intensity of the reaction to those anti-Israel remarks to the point where she was basically pressured into retiring?

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Jon Stewart gets this one right about the White House Press corps, with the pathetic wrangling over Helen Thomas' seat and beach parties with the Bidens.

Stewart: Are you journalists or are you rushing a sorority? If the public wants reporters to hold politicians accountable for their actions, they need to start throwing better parties.

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Helen Thomas presses John Brennan and Janet Napolitano during the White House press conference on the Christmas Underwear bomber on why Al Qaeda wants to attack us -- and of course never gets an answer to her question before they move on to the next reporter.

I'm sure if Brennan had answered her honestly he would have been immediately attacked by Republicans for giving aid and comfort to the terrorists and for not loving America since that would mean admitting how awful our foreign policy is.

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While the rest of the Morning Joe crew was espousing their new found love for Helen Thomas and former MSNBC reporter Chip Reid, Carl Bernstein managed to get Chuck Todd's back hair up by reminding him that the White House press corps yelling at the Press Secretary is not exactly what anyone should consider real journalism.

While I whole heartedly agree with Todd that it is important to hold these people accountable, Bernstein's points about this entire ordeal looking petty, and about where real journalism happens, which is reporters getting out there and knocking on doors, and digging into whether someone's actually telling you the truth or not, fact checking what you're told, etc. is what should be considered actual journalism is valid as well, and he managed to make Todd look petty while making it.

Todd tried to defend what the White House press corps does on a daily basis, and not very well IMO. When you're making excuses for asking Michael Jackson questions you've already lost the argument Bernstein was trying to make.

I want to know where these birds were with their love of Helen Thomas when the Bush White House refused to call on her for the better part of eight years? I'd also like to know if they're going to continue to support her if she asks some tough questions on things like these bank bailouts, spying on everyone which hasn't stopped, or these mindless wars that we're still sending our troops off to fight and die in. Is that going to make the "news" cycle on Morning Joe? Somehow, I doubt it.