Why is this news?

I just don't get it, Obama calls to and congratulates a newly elected mayor of a major city, and leaves a voice mail.

The voice mail read as follows:

This is President Barack Obama. I'm just calling to congratulate you on an extraordinary victory – a victory for the people of Houston as well as for yourself. I think you're going to be just a great mayor, so hopefully we'll get a chance to see each other soon, or talk. But I want to let you know that we're watching and very proud. Bye-bye.

That’s a nice message, and appropriate for the newly elected mayor to Houston. No big deal. This is part of what the President should do; especially if the Mayor is a member of his own party.

The whole thing should be one big Yawn, and not worth a blip in anybody's news room, nor even a blip on Obama's radar screen. Why then did the Obama administration became irritated and after the voicemail of President Obama congratulating her on her election victory was leaked on YouTube. The new mayor said she received a curt call from someone in the White House wanting to know how the president's voicemail got up on YouTube, and that the president’s communications should remain private.

I think the new Houston Mayor, Annise Parker, should be proud of her victory, and sharing the congratulation she received from the POTUS with her constituents is wholly acceptable conduct. If she didn’t post it, and some staffer did, it is still wholly acceptable conduct. The POTUS called to congratulate her, how cool, is that. I know if I was called and congratulated by the POTUS, I’d be telling everybody and I don’t even like the man. If the president had not wanted the well worded congratulations to be heard or kept private, he shouldn’t have put them in the voice mail to a publicly elected official.

The only thing remotely newsworthy is the fact that the Obama administration was upset about it being posted to YouTube. The message Obama gave was a nice, apolitical, benign, pleasant, congratulatory, short and to the point, message. Why would he or anybody in his administration care if it was made public?

You don’t think it’s because Annise Parker is openly gay?