You know the coverage is likely to be especially fragrant, shall we say, when they’re warning you in advance to hold your nose. A vignette from “Morning Joe” via Newsbusters:

WILLIE GEIST: Mark, at this point then, what is President Obama’s incentive to negotiate? Because if he sits there, the law that he championed and the law that he got passed and the law that was upheld by the Supreme Court will go into effect. If he doesn’t — if he doesn’t give anything up on this he gets what he wants. Why does he negotiate with Republicans?

MARK HALPERIN: Here what’s the White House and to some extent the Hill is going to monitor. One is how the press covers the shutdown and does it just go back into the ’90s mode of saying obstructionist Republicans are causing a shutdown and people, real people are hurting? And the White House is assuming that’s going to happen. Then they’re going to watch the polls and see whether it’s not just partisan. Whether by the end of the week there are surveys that show public/private, that people are blaming Republicans and that that’s going to put pressure on Boehner to come to the floor and either force his — some members of his own conference beyond the handful who will never be with him on this to have a compromise. So they don’t have to capitulate on the floor. They don’t let Nancy Pelosi dictate what gets passed. So the White House does not have much incentive. Because they think–they think–those trends are going to go in their direction by the end of the week or early next week at the latest because again, the press is largely sympathetic to their arguments on this that it’s the House Republicans’ fault.

Right out of the gate, here’s eight solid minutes of Ashleigh Banfield barely tolerating Marsha Blackburn’s and Dana Rohrabacher’s presence. My favorite piece in this vein from the past weekend was Politico wondering whether the rest of the media would be able to give ObamaCare a fair shake by reserving judgment in the teeth of early glitches and dubious White House ass-covering. Can the press muster the will power, nay, the wisdom, not to dwell on implementation’s many fark-ups at a moment when unfavorable stories about his pet boondoggle might really weaken Obama’s hand against those darned wingnuts?

Somehow, I think they’ll rise to the occasion. Click the image to watch.