By Yael T. Abouhalkah, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist

How dumb is Barack Obama? Not in terms of actual intelligence, mind you, but in terms of media savvy? It appears "Access Hollywood," a tabloid-style TV show, has given us the answer.

One of the show's reporters scored a coup recently: an interview with the Obama family, including Michelle's and Barack's two daughters.

Oops, Obama said Wednesday.

"I think that we got carried away in the moment," Obama told NBC. "We were having a birthday party and everybody was laughing, and suddenly this thing cropped up, and I didn't catch it quickly enough and I was surprised by the attention it got."

Wait a minute: "Suddenly this thing cropped up...."?

Sorry, but very little suddenly crops up in a presidential campaign.

The schedules of the candidate -- and his wife, for that matter -- are tightly scripted. As little as possible is left to chance.

A reporter for a tabloid TV show doesn't just waltz into a birthday party and score the interview that ABC, NBC, CBS and all the other networks would have died to have.

Indeed, the reporter said the Obama campaign had reached out to "Access Hollywood" to make the interview possible.

Granted, the interview didn't break any ground and wasn't very serious.

Still, Obama is the one who has said previously that he wanted to keep his two young daughters out of the media spotlight as much as possible.

Maybe he thought few people would see the interview on "Access Hollywood."

If he thought that, of course, he truly doesn't understand the media, especially in the age of shared video and the Internet.

Obama said Wednesday this is "something that we'll be avoiding in the future."

Then again, it's highly possible another interview with Obama's family will "suddenly crop up" if one is needed during the presidential campaign to show that he's a family kind of guy.