Yesterday, Obama gave one of the most grotesque statements ever made by any elected official in conjunction with a tragedy.

I would ask news organizations – because I won’t put these facts forward – have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me; it will be coming from you.

This is as irrelevant as the man making the challenge. Why not compare gun deaths to auto fatalities? or the flu? or falling from skyscrapers? How about earthquakes and falling into Old Faithful? Why not really get edgy and compare the number of murders committed by “assault weapons” to those committed by fists. Why one would even compare those two things together beggars the imagination. They are not even vaguely related. But the American media is nothing if not subservient and we have this from the Washington Post:

Obama wanted news organizations to put gun deaths and terror deaths side-by-side. We did. http://t.co/Nhox2fBijv pic.twitter.com/Jf26cjo3mI

— Philip Bump (@pbump) October 1, 2015

Then one of my favorites on Twitter, @redsteeze, noticed something funny:

.@pbump Maybe don’t copy paste your admin talking points next time you ridiculous hack pic.twitter.com/S2v8u7Jpea

— Stephen Miller (@redsteeze) October 2, 2015

Both the Post and the discoverer of the bridge from Gaza to the West Bank at Vox, Zack Beauchamp had used virtually the same “look at me, teacher, I’m a real good little boy” language.

This is how the American press operates in the age of Obama. He tells them what to do and they do it. No thinking required or wanted.