I have long thought that most members of the Washington Press Corps go home at night to a cardboard box full of wine and lip print stained press clippings of Barack Obama. Mark Murray, the senior political editor for NBC News, reinforces that image.After the State of the Union address on Tuesday night, Mark Murray tweeted:

Obama’s ending on Remsburg wasn’t just a story about America — it also was a story about Obama. Nothing has ever come easy

The President honored Sgt. First Class Cory Remsburg for his heroism in Afghanistan. Remsburg, on his tenth tour in Afghanistan, nearly died when a roadside bomb exploded. He suffered brain damage, paralysis on his left side, is partially blind, and has difficulty talking.And Mark Murray of NBC News thought Barack Obama was telling Cory Remsburg’s story to tell his own story. And you know what? Mark Murray was right.To be clear, Murray heard that story and connected it to Barack Obama’s heroic struggles against the GOP. People were not at first sure, but Murray expanded on his tweet at NBC and revealed what an utterly vapid courtier of the Obama Administration he really is. In fact, Mark Murray really is a courtier of the Obama Administration. He is married to Sasha Johnson, who is Chief of Staff at the FAA, and formerly of CNN. This is just another bit of the incestuousness of politics and press in Barack Obama’s America.He, like so many others in his demographic, comes from the lightweight background of deficit running left-of-center publications where world view is more important than real world. From the Washington Monthly and Washingtonian he moved to National Journal and then to NBC. Comfortably established with no need to really connect further to his native Texas, he can join the ranks of left-of-center shallow purveyors of conventional wisdom who run in a self-congratulatory herd. But hey, he roots for the Longhorns so HASHTAG AUTHENTIC!Mollie Hemingway pointed out that Mark Murray wrote exactly what he meant:

That story could also apply to Obama himself: Nothing in his seven years on the national political stage (2007-2014) has come easy. The 2008 race for the Democratic nomination. Even that general election. The health-care law. The re-election campaign. And now the president’s current situation in which he finds himself bloodied and bruised after the botched health-care rollout.

She also noted former Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau agreed. Ace of Spades has more on this. Both are spot on.That Mark Murray could look at what Cory Remsburg went through and compare it to Barack Obama’s struggles is the height of self-absorbed vapidity. It is, in essence, the essential foundation for all of political reporting in Washington, D.C. by the up and coming members of the press. The struggles of taking the Red Line can be compared to the struggles of finding food in Sudan, the struggles of the singles press corp hook up can be compared to arranged marriage in Afghanistan, and the struggles of dealing with a political party can be compared to a soldier nearly getting killed and being left disabled. It is shallow and it shows both a deep disconnect outside the bubble of Washington and a lack of depth and experience.But hell, they read Clausewitz and know war is politics by other means.And of course, Mark Murray is absolutely right.Barack Obama is a man who cannot pay tribute to any event without sending out a picture of himself in some way connected. Mandela dies? See here the picture of Barack Obama in the jail cell. Jesus crucified? See here a picture of Obama doing pilates on a yoga mat (come on people, think about it).Of course Barack Obama is going to use Cory Remsburg as a way to tell his own story. He is a vapid narcissist of great inexperience, a privileged existence with much of his life handed to him, and he connects at that shallow level with the press corp that has, pretty literally, married into his administration. Obama and the press corps get each other because they are of the same class — poseurs of authenticity who think everything is all about them and know nothing except their own kind.