Obama fan shops Barack over remark

Barack Obama's team are said to be baffled as to why one of his declared supporters, citizen journalist Mayhill Fowler, chose to report the senator's sniffy remarks about small-town voters in the Midwest clinging to "guns and religion" politics. Her report on the Huffington Post was pounced on by Obama's detractors, with some commentators believing it could ruin Obama's chances.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Fowler's decision may have something to do with Obama's team not allowing her to attend various fundraising dinners, even though she had offered to pay to do so. Apparently peeved by this, Fowler used all her wiles to secure an invite to the $1,000-a-head fundraiser at the San Francisco, where Obama made his controversial remarks.

"She didn't like the way she'd been treated by Obama's people," says a source, "so although she knew reporting what he said would do him no good, she decided to go ahead anyway, partly out of spite and partly because it was a great story."