White House Laughs, Mocks Question About Obama Not Giving Easter Statement

President Obama is known to regularly issue statements about important holidays, especially Christian ones. For example, both he and Michelle delivered one this past Christmas. So it is interesting that the president failed to issue any sort of message or proclamation for Sunday's Easter holiday.

Fox Nation noted the absence:

President Obama failed to release a statement or a proclamation recognizing the national observance of Easter Sunday, Christianity's most sacred holiday.

By comparison, the White House has released statements recognizing the observance of major Muslim holidays and released statements in 2010 on Ramadan, Eid-ul-Fitr, Hajj, and Eid-ul-Adha.

The president did release an Easter statement last year, but it was heavily criticized after it referenced Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and people of no faith at all.

It would seem, then, that a question about an the absent statement would be appropriate at today's White House press briefing. It certainly wouldn't deserve to laughed and mocked, would it? Well, that's exactly how Press Secretary Jay Carney treated the question.

You'll notice that Carney initially tries to brush aside the question by saying he didn't know, then moves to laughing, and then mocks a reporter who questions why the press secretary doesn't know if the president put out a statement:

Carney is correct that the president did attend church. But as we noted earlier today, the pastor of that congregation infused race into the sermon, and once equated Rush Limbaugh with the KKK.

Read Meredith's thoughts on the issue over on the blog.

UPDATE:

Alex Alvarez over at Mediate describes why Carney's response was so egregious using a healthy dose of sarcasm:

I mean, honestly, why would the White House’s Press Secretary know what the White House did or did not send out? Can’t journalists ever do anything for themselves? Calm down, people! It’s just a holiday that’s celebrated by something like, what? Seventy-eight percent of Americans, including the First Family? It’s no “Wright Brothers Day.”