-- "What are you going to do about Robert Gates's staff of Bush administration holdovers?"

-- "Could you give us a better sense of what the vice president's role will be in your Administration?"

-- Is he kidding?

Let's just say these aren't exactly queries born of zapping neurons, let alone a detectable pulse.

Elsewhere in the MSM, CNN's Campbell Brown of "No Bias, No Bull" reacted to the Obama-Baker exchange with far more lively sarcasm and fervor.

"I mean, really," Brown said, "how silly of that reporter to dare ask you, Mr. President-Elect, how it is that you completely mocked Hillary Clinton's foreign policy experience just a few months ago, and yet today, you think there is no one more qualified than she to lead your foreign policy team." Brown went on to nail Obama's "fun" response as "an attempt to delegitimize" the question.

"But it is a legitimate question," she continued, adding: "Annoying questions are about more than just the press 'having fun.' Annoying questions are about the press doing its job and the people's right to know."

Could this mark the decline of Obamedia-mania? Don't hold your breath. Paradoxically, though, even as the conservative punditry glows with a strange rapture over President-elect Obama's emerging Cabinet, there is at least a limited revolt in progress among the MSM.

Of course, we still don't have an answer to that one good question.