Well, the president showed last night why he's different from the media. As reported by the Paper of Record:

The only time he seemed irritated came when he was asked why the attorney general of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, seemed to have more success getting A.I.G. executives to return some bonuses than his own administration. Pressed on why he did not express outrage immediately upon learning of the bonuses, Mr. Obama said sharply, “Well, it took us a couple of days because I like to know what I’m talking about before I speak.”

Imagine the arrogance of waiting to get the facts straight before speaking off the top of one's head.

Let's see if that becomes the signature media soundbite like Steve Kroft's "punch drunk" or Obama's "special Olympics" gaffe.

Oh, by the way, it's interesting that not one reporter at the press conference asked a question about the plan that Secretary Geithner offered regarding how to deal with the bad assets of the nation's crippled financial institutions via a public/private partnership.

This is how our media works: it'll spend time over questions about how "angry" the president is or isn't, when gathered it'll ask questions about "race" but not about the president's proposed plan regarding the near insolvency of the country's banks and nonbanks (as in AIG).

Last night was the "good" Obama, but today's Washington Post has a story on the "bad" Obama using the state secret privilege to stop the judiciary from making inquiries about some of the previous administration's notorious post-9/11 policies and practices, especially in regard to detention, torture, and surveillance.

The "bad" Obama, as reported by the Post:

Civil liberties advocates are accusing the Obama administration of forsaking campaign rhetoric and adopting the same expansive arguments that his predecessor used to cloak some of the most sensitive intelligence-gathering programs of the Bush White House.

The first signs have come just weeks into the new administration, in a case filed by an Oregon charity suspected of funding terrorism. President Obama's Justice Department not only sought to dismiss the lawsuit by arguing that it implicated "state secrets," but also escalated the standoff -- proposing that government lawyers might take classified documents from the court's custody to keep the charity's representatives from reviewing them.

Once again, not one significant question on this by our intrepid news reporters. Perhaps this is why, as noted by the Post's Howard Kurtz, the president didn't call on any old newspapers: they don't matter because they don't do their jobs:

President Obama declined to call on any reporters from the nation's top newspapers during last night's news conference but still faced far more aggressive questioning than in his first prime-time encounter with the media.

And this is called "aggressive questioning"?