How come print cannot be assigned to a variable?

[Steven Bethard]

John Doe wrote:
> If you need a function that prints stuff, consider these two examples:
> [snip]
> PrintFunc = lambda x: print x

py> printfunc = lambda x: print x
Traceback (  File "<interactive input>", line 1
     printfunc = lambda x: print x
                               ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

See Inappropriate use of Lambda on the Python Wiki[1].  This is also a 
horrible idea as it means you can only print a single item:

py> print 1, 2, 3
1 2 3
py> def write(x):
...     print x
...
py> write(1, 2, 3)
Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<interactive input>", line 1, in ?
TypeError: write() takes exactly 1 argument (3 given)
py> def write(*args):
...     print args
...
py> write(1, 2, 3)
(1, 2, 3)

The print statement has special spacing behavior.  You could perhaps 
approximate it with something like:

py> def write(*args):
...     for arg in args:
...         print arg,
...     print
...
py> write(1, 2, 3)
1 2 3

But why go to all this effort?

STeVe

[1] http://wiki.python.org/moin/DubiousPython