The kind of thing that makes it hard to take some journalists seriously

On the campaign trail, frequently one reporter is assigned to attend an event on behalf of all the reporters in "the pool." The reasoning is mainly logistics -- when a candidate visits a tiny restaurant, it's impossible for all the reporters to fit inside, for example. The reporter files a "pool report" which his or her colleagues can then use in their articles.

Today Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times filed a pool report on Barack Obama's visit to The Little Dooey, a small restaurant in Mississippi. He related the items that Obama ordered (a bunch, it was food for eight!), conveyed Obama's thoughts on Rep. Steve King's smear-mongering comments from this weekend, and added some of Obama's comments on his VP-talk smackdown. Zeleny then closed with the following line:

None of the food that he ordered from The Little Dooey was seen being consumed.

Obviously, Zeleny's implication was that Obama was a phony.

It seems like an innocent, trivial remark -- but it actually isn't, as absurd as that sounds. If Zeleny thought that it was important to find out whether or not Obama ate any of the food, he could have asked. Not that hard to do.

In fact, if he thought it was important, he should have asked. But he didn't. Instead, he added in a snarky throw-away line, no doubt to curry favor with the boys and girls on the bus -- the traveling press corps.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not whipped into a frenzy over this -- but it provides you a window into the mind of reporters, and how shallow they really are.