At the end of an East Room signing ceremony for legislation funding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a member of the media jumped the rope penning off reporters from invited guests in an apparent attempt to get Obama’s autograph, according to a White House aide.
An official familiar with the incident identified the journalist involved as Robert Feuereisen of Jewish World Review, a New York-based Web site which features primarily conservative Jewish writers. A message left at a phone listed in that name in Pikesville, Md. was not immediately returned.
The editor of the Web site, Binyamin Jolkovsky, confirmed to Politico that Feuereisen gathers information for the site and that he was the journalist who asked for Obama’s autograph Wednesday.
Feuereisen’s 12-year-old son had bought an inaugural magazine of some sort for $8, and "his kid just drove him crazy," said Jolkovsky. The editor said Feuereisen has been working in the White House for more than 10 years, and did not lose his credential in the incident, but received a warning not to do it again. "He’s harmless, to put it mildly," the editor said.
At the junkets for the Jewish parochial press (the Jewish Journal, The Jewish Week, etc), it’s not uncommon for its writers to pose for pictures with famous people they are interviewing, such as Ehud Ohlmert, etc. It’s also not uncommon for writers at such publications to imagine they are friends with the people they are covering and pursue them with endless personal phone calls.
