The post thumbnail is added to a post type as something this post type supports. If you want to remove post thumbnail functionality from a post type, you can call remove_post_type_support()
. Regular posts are also defined as custom post types, so it should work for them too.
add_action( 'init', 'wpse4936_init', 100 /* Something high, to make sure all post types are registered */ );
function wpse4936_init()
{
remove_post_type_support( 'post', 'post-thumbnail''thumbnail' );
// Or remove it for all registerd types
foreach ( get_post_types() as $post_type ) {
remove_post_type_support( $post_type, 'post-thumbnail''thumbnail' );
}
}