White House bars CNN from Air Force One, funds taxpayer ads instead, calls that patriotism.

…(cont) Then Saturday came along, and it turns out "restored" has an expiration date. CNN was pulled off the pool for Air Force One again — this time for the Tennessee trip, this time just the one outlet, this time the seat went to Real America's Voice News, per the Post. Does a seat on the plane go to whoever asks the fewest questions? I wrote it down. I'm not saying anything. I'm asking.

I want to tell you about my car, because it's the only demonstration I've got in me some weeks. Every morning I drive it to the toll plaza on Route 9, and every morning there's a fast lane and a cash lane, and every morning somebody in a truck ahead of me gets waved straight through while I'm digging in the cupholder for quarters. There's no bulletin explaining why. You just notice, over time, that it's always the same truck.

Back to the pool. When CNN got pulled the first time — the whole three of them, back in September — the rest of the press corps didn't just shrug it off. ABC, CBS, NBC, even Fox News, by the Common Dreams account, refused to cover for the empty seats. There was an event with no audio because nobody wanted to run the microphone. Does a White House that bans its critics end up talking to a room with the sound off? That's not me saying it. That's what happened, per the wire, that week.

Not that it was illegal. Not that it was cruel. Just that it was a bad play, the kind a smart operation doesn't run. I wrote that down too. Does a former West Wing staffer publicly second-guessing the plan from the outside sound like an operation with its confidence intact?

Now here's the part I almost forgot, and I only remembered because I went back through my notes for something else entirely. The same week the plane seat went to Real America's Voice News, the White House was out defending a taxpayer-funded television campaign — ads, running ahead of the midterms, paid for the way government ads get paid for — and when somebody asked whether that looked partisan, the response, and I have this one word for word: "Patriotism isn't partisan."

Oh — hang on, before you go. I want to read that back to you one more time, next to the other thing, because I think they belong on the same page. The seat on the plane went to the friendlier outlet. The ad calling itself patriotic ran on the public's dime. And the line the White House chose, the actual sentence, was: patriotism isn't partisan.