I think Matthew Cooper, writing at The Atlantic, comes awfully close to the truth with this observation [emphasis added]:

Besides, the Iranian who posed the question via Pitney offered up one a lot smarter question than some of the eyerollers offered by other reporters like, did you speak out on Iran because of Lindsay Graham and John McCain (CBS News's Chip Reid) or (Fox News's Major Garrett) What took you so long?

Meaning, does it surprise anyone that the Washington Post's Dana Milbank was among the Villagers shrieking the loudest about Pitney's presence in the White House briefing room, and that Milbank writes a column for the Post which, week in and week out, is nearly uniformly lacking in substance?

Does it surprise anyone that people like Milbank, who for professional reasons prefer to have a White House press corps that obsesses over trivia and process, was among the scribes most insulted when an online writer breached the Village gate and asked a deeply substantive question?

As Media Matters noted, Milbank wrote an entire column belittling Pitney's press questions and mocking the “prepackaged entertainment” of the Obama presser. But oops, Milbank forgot to tell readers what Pitney actually asked. In other words, Milbank ignored the substance. He was only interested in the process.

FYI, the question (via an Iranian) was this: “Under which conditions would you accept the election of Ahmadinejad, and if you do accept it without any significant changes in the conditions there, isn't that a betrayal of the -- of what the demonstrators there are working towards?”