"Unsuspecting hikers had to move to the side of the [Koko Head Crater Stairs] as a sweaty Obama and his security entourage barreled up the trail's 1,048 wooden steps...."

Much social media activity ensued. E.g.:

Climbing Koko Head Crater with President Obama. It was so exciting meeting him!! #POTUS #Hawaii

A photo posted by Krissia Manansala (@krissia_nicole) on Dec 22, 2015 at 2:34pm PST

Koko kudos to the President for not wearing shorts.

Obama's wan approval of the Cubs.

Congrats @Cubs - even @whitesox fans are rooting for you!

— President Obama (@POTUS) October 14, 2015

Wow. I can't believe a Chicagoan isn't thrilled about the Cubs. Once your favorite team is eliminated, don't you just lock on to a post-season team to love? We've adopted the Cubs from up here in Wisconsin, and Wisconsin normally regards Chicago as the enemy. By "we," I mean, Meade and me. I haven't talked to everyone. I have heard at least one person say that the Cubs winning is shaking up his world. The Cubs are supposed to be ever the losers. I'd thought, that's why it's so cool when they win at long last. (Did you notice the sign in the crowd last night that read "Party like it's 1908?" (1908 was the last time the Cubs won the World Series.)) But apparently some people want the Cubs to retain their lovable-loser vibe. It's a theme in the music of the Midwest.

Obama poses with the Presidents.

I like!

"But on this issue of um uh Obama's man... man... manliness... or manhood... what's your... what's your take on this?"

This is a strangely evasive and inconclusive effort at approaching a subject!

What's going on here?!

Bob is anxious about this topic.

Althouse has a bullshit topic she can't advance.

Both of them are padding and stalling for time.

Neither of them wants to confront Obama's weakness.

 

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Should the President go on vacation?

There's war in the Middle East — as ever — and illegal immigration seems to be proceeding apace — as usual. Dana Milbank seems to disapprove.

Should the President go on vacation?
	No. Stay in the White House and work for us until your term is over.
	Yes, but much less often and keep it very modest, like clearing brush in Crawford, Texas.
	Yes, but less often and not to glamorous places, like Martha's Vineyard.
	Yes, he needs to preserve and restore his mind and body, for the greater good, so do whatever works.
	Yes, it's his call. Whatever he thinks is right is fine.
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"The Ed Klein book... I read it, and I'm not alleging it doesn't exist and isn't true, any of that, but some of the quotes strike me as odd in the sense that I don't know people who speak this way."

Said Rush Limbaugh on his show today, and that's what I said first thing this morning.

Rush continues:

"I hate that man Obama more than any man I’ve ever met, more than any man who ever lived." I don't know. Does this guy [Bill Clinton] talk that way? "I hate that man Obama more than any man I’ve ever met, more than any man who ever lived." Why would he tell people this? If they've got this public show going on of unity, you know, one of the things you never betray your true feelings about people...

And then it quotes Bill telling Hillary, "I am not going to enjoy this [playing golf with Obama]. I’ve had two successors since I left the White House -- Bush and Obama -- and I’ve heard more from Bush, asking for my advice, than I’ve heard from Obama. I have no relationship with the president -- none whatsoever."

That doesn't sound like what Bill would say to Hillary. That sounds like a bad movie script where the backstory is shoehorned into the dialogue. If you're going to reconstruct (or make up) quotes, write convincing dialogue!

Comedy is when a white man falls into an open sewer and dies.

Jack Hamilton has a piece in Slate subtitled "Forget Walter White. Eastbound & Down is the most original, disturbing, wrenching show on television. (And it’s hilarious, too.)"

If we live in a golden age of great television shows, the vast majority of these shows have featured angst-ridden white male protagonists. This shift from heroes to anti-heroes has been frequently and rightly characterized as a broader interrogation of masculinity itself, one occasioned by crises of its creators, crises of culture, or both. But while current prestige-magnets like Mad Men and Breaking Bad might offer revisionist takes on white maleness, they also offer their audiences renewed fantasies of the same. Young men buy suits cut to look like Don Draper’s; aggrieved Internet communities close ranks in protection of Walter White’s right to be the One Who Knocks.

So what's great about Eastbound & Down is that it deprives the beleaguered white male of hope.

Eastbound & Down isn’t so much a show about white masculinity in transition or decline as it is a biting send-up of male fantasy itself. Powers fancies himself an alpha dog, gunslinging, rock ’n’ roll outlaw, a fiction he believes to be reality, and to which he believes himself to be entitled. Kenny Powers’ problem, in a sense, is that he’s watched too much TV. If Mad Men is a drama about the encroaching demise of a certain white male dominance, Eastbound & Down is a satire of its vacancy, and its bankruptcy. The latter is a whole lot funnier, and often more daring.

Because hopeless, pathetic decline is hilarious. To paraphrase Mel Brooks: Tragedy is when a woman or person of color feels disrespected or bullied. Comedy is when a white man falls into an open sewer and dies. (Here's the disemparaphrased Mel Brooks quote.)

I quoted the subtitle of the article above — because it made the content of the article clearer— but now I see enough additional meaning to make me want to quote the title. It's "Breaking Ball." That's not just a play on "Breaking Bad" and a reference to crushing testicles, it's an allusion to the show's milieu, baseball. Eastbound & Down shows baseball as "gross and debauched, a morass of juiced-up players, abusive fans, godforsaken locales, bored and boring spectacle."

Many of the actors on-screen... boast hilariously unathletic physiques, and seem to have last donned a glove back in the days when home plate came with a tee. It’s the ugliest depiction of the game in recent memory, a hilarious and welcome desecration of one of the old white America’s favorite civic religions.

Take that, white America.

"Obama plays 27 holes."

"After morning briefings on the crisis in Syria...."

6 ideas for Obama supporters on how to spin this:

1. Impressive to work on a Saturday, when most ordinary golfers head straight for the course.

2. 27! Wow! Most golfers poop out after 18 holes.

3. A round and a half. A circle followed by an elegant a semi-circle. Creative! Who but Obama thinks of such things? Brilliant!

4. Oh, how much new is there really on any given day about Syria? What difference at this point does it make?

5. Why do you think they call them "briefings"? They're brief.

6. You don't want to get into the weeds — in briefings as in golf. NOTE: You've got to be careful with the "weed" imagery. The mind drifts here, but the point is: Jimmy Carter micromanaged, and Obama is not like Carter.

9/11 is not like Washington's Birthday/Lincoln's Birthday.

You're not supposed to use them to promote your commercial enterprise.

A Wisconsin golf course — Tumbledown Trails — advertised a $9.11 special for 9/11. It was, understandably, not well received. It was, in fact, so poorly received that they're considering closing the place on 9/11 to protect employees from the unpleasant things people might say.

Considering war and death, we should object to Washington's Birthday/Lincoln's Birthday advertising. There is some criticism of that now and then, but not much, perhaps because they're from the somewhat distant past, perhaps because we commemorate them on their birthdays — or a day around their birthdays — and not on an anniversary of their suffering.

And then, there's just something about golf. That golf should be played when anything serious is happening!

NYT acknowledges Obama's difficulties interacting with foreign leaders.

The article has headline that shifts the blame away from Obama — "Extending a Hand Abroad, Obama Often Finds a Cold Shoulder" — but read the first few paragraphs, and you'll see that the style Obama uses on us American citizens doesn't work on foreign leaders.

Paragraph 1:

Over porterhouse steak and cherry pie at a desert estate in California earlier this month, President Obama delivered a stern lecture to President Xi Jinping about China’s disputes with its neighbors. If it is going to be a rising power, he scolded, it needs to behave like one.

You've got to wonder why "deliver[ing] a stern lecture" and "scold[ing]" equals "extending a hand."

Paragraph 3 has Obama trying "to lighten the mood" with Vladimir Putin "by joking about how age was depleting their athletic skills." Putin responded with what the NYT calls "a taut smile": "The president just wants to get me to relax." Including Putin in the self-deprecation that's supposed to be friendly and humorous is — unlike lecturing and scolding — fairly characterized as "extending a hand," but the point is, the article portrays Obama as ineffectual.

Scrolling toward the end:

Mr. Obama differs from his most recent predecessors, who made personal relationships with leaders the cornerstone of their foreign policies. The first George Bush moved gracefully in foreign capitals, while Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush related to fellow leaders as politicians, trying to understand their pressures and constituencies.

“That’s not President Obama’s style,” said James B. Steinberg, Mr. Clinton’s deputy national security adviser and Mr. Obama’s deputy secretary of state.

But what is his style then? Steinberg doesn't say and one must struggle to read between the lines. I would tend to infer that Obama is relying on the way people are supposed to relate to him, which is to love or at least really like him. Others are supposed to respond to his uplifting presence.

The article ends, not with a conclusion about what Obama is doing and why it doesn't work, but with more detail on Putin:

Their first meeting was marked by a nearly hourlong lecture by Mr. Putin about all the ways the United States had offended Moscow. At their second, Mr. Putin kept Mr. Obama waiting 30 minutes.

And there's a quote informing us that "Obama doesn’t really take kindly to being harangued," which is interesting, considering that the article began with the steak-and-cherry-pie anecdote about Obama lecturing Xi.

One of "the most gruesome plays in televised sports history... did not occur on a football field, where we have come to expect the carnage of violent collisions."

It happened in basketball, and there wasn't even any touching.

[Kevin Ware] simply landed awkwardly... snapping the tibia and fibula of his right leg. One broken bone stuck through the skin of Ware’s lower leg.

“It’s a torsional injury,” said Craig H. Bennett, head orthopedic surgeon for the Maryland Terrapins, who has seen only one similar injury in the past decade. “It’s a rotational injury, and all the stress gets concentrated on one area.”

Normally, he said, knee or ankle ligaments would absorb the stress of Ware’s twisting leap, tearing if the forces were too great, or doing their job and sending him back to the game. But Ware landed in just the wrong way, Bennett believes. The result was an injury that is likely to be remembered for as long as the NCAA tournament is played.

AND: Speaking of painful basketball... "Took Obama 15 Tries To Sink A Basket On White House Court Monday."

"President Obama on Sunday displayed the freedom that comes with not having another election ahead of him..."

"... golfing with Tiger Woods in an enclave of privilege here along Florida’s blustery Atlantic coast."

"Obama to spend long holiday weekend in Florida — without Michelle..."

Says Drudge, collecting a set of teasers under what seems to be a very old picture of Michelle and Barack (as if to say, they were in love once but not anymore):



Those 2 go on plenty of vacations together, and now, he wants to golf and she doesn't have anything she likes doing in Florida. And she likes to ski. She's going to Aspen. This seems perfectly fine to me.

Should your spouse travel without you when he/she loves a sport that you don't care about?
	No, he/she should plan a different vacation somewhere else that you both like.
	He/she should find a way to take you along and include you in some side activities that you like.
	You should go along and attempt to participate in the activity.
	It's okay only if you get a simultaneous, equally good vacation that you like.
	He/she should feel free to go, even if you are left home alone.
	He/she can go, but payback will be exacted at a time and in a form he/she cannot predict.
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"Pakistan Tells U.S. to 'Vacate' Air Base as Border Strike Inflames Tensions."

"... Islamabad had already ordered the country's border crossings into Afghanistan closed, blocking off NATO supply lines, after the strike."

MEANWHILE: "Obama and family take in basketball game, chat with Bill Murray." He did comment on current events, noting that the tentative deal to end the NBA lockout seems to be "a good deal."

"I just want regular jeans. You know, the kind that used to be the only kind.”

This is the anecdote that begins Barry Schwartz's book "The Paradox of Choice." He "spluttered" that after a Gap salesgirl asked him if he wanted "slim fit, easy fit, relaxed fit, baggy, or extra baggy... stonewashed, acid-washed, or distressed... button-fly or zipper-fly?" His anguish was supposed to exemplify a big problem we have these days.

By creating all these options, the store undoubtedly had done a favor for customers with varied tastes and body types. However, by vastly expanding the range of choices, they had also created a new problem that needed to be solved. Before these options were available, a buyer like myself had to settle for an imperfect fit, but at least purchasing jeans was a five-minute affair. Now it was a complex decision in which I was forced to invest time, energy, and no small amount of self-doubt, anxiety, and dread.

Buying jeans is a trivial matter, but it suggests a much larger theme we will pursue throughout this book, which is this: When people have no choice, life is almost unbearable. As the number of available choices increases, as it has in our consumer culture, the autonomy, control, and liberation this variety brings are powerful and But as the number of choices keeps growing, negative aspects of having a multitude of options begin to appear. As the number of choices grows further, the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.

Get a grip, Barry! I feel like Barry I-just-want-normal-jeans Schwartz was the guy who inspired one of my favorite songs:



That was linked to in the comments — by bagoh20 — over on the Obama and the Packers post:

When I think of Obama and sports I always am reminded of this video that Althouse showed quite a while back. I watch it ever now and then, and I don't know why.

Why you watch it... or why Obama and sports reminds you of it? You watch it because it's so infectious. And comforting. And infectiously comforting, like friendly jeans. It reminds you of Obama and sports, I think, because you've had this picture in your head for so long: "Obama Celebrates Win By Riding Bike." He was a winner, about to coast downhill, and the regrettable jeans were the first foreshadowing of a failed presidency. He was not, as we'd thought, the hero. He was the man in Randy Normal Jeans. And then there are the dance moves:



They were so cool at the time, but now? I'm seeing Randy.

Obama opines on Michael Vick's being given a second chance.

Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie described the phone call he received from the President:

"He said, 'So many people who serve time never get a fair second chance,' " said Lurie, who did not indicate when the call occurred. "He said, 'It's never a level playing field for prisoners when they get out of jail.' And he was happy that we did something on such a national stage that showed our faith in giving someone a second chance after such a major downfall.''

How inspiring is the return of Michael Vick? Will it hearten those who are attempting to return to society after serving time and make the rest of us more likely to welcome them back? Or will it make us more likely to think cynically that the rich and famous get special exceptions from the rules? Does Vick make the field look more level or less level?

IN THE COMMENTS: Meade (adopting the commenting style of Trooper York) wrote:

"Pot had helped, spreading genital herpes; maybe a little felony conspiracy in interstate commerce/aid of unlawful animal fighting venture when you could afford it."

- Dreams from My Blotter: A Short Memoir by Barrrk "OokieRonMexico" Obama (2010), pp. 93–94.

Rialby said...

"They talk about me like a dog" - BHO

I guess talking about him like a dog is better than what Michael Vick might do... pick him up by his tail, swing him around and smash his head against a cinder block wall.

Hmmm. You know, I've never gotten the impression Obama had much affection for Bo.

Michelle Cottle is really getting on Barack Obama's case about playing golf.

She writes:

Why would a leader vowing to shake up Washington--to alter the very nature of politics--sell his soul to a leisure activity that screams stodgy, hyperconventional Old Guard?

Sell his soul? Golf is not the devil. Isn't it possible that he golfs because he enjoys it? Unlike basketball, you get some leisurely strolling time. You can talk. You can smoke! And you're outdoors.

There are signs that Obama has been nursing a creeping golf addiction for some time now.

If there's an addiction involved, I bet it's smoking.

He took up the game a little more than a decade ago as a newbie state senator hoping to bond with more rural, conservative colleagues. Next thing you know, he was hooked....

So he actually has something genuine in common with the clinging-to-guns-and-religion crowd. That's horrible to Cottle, who'd like him to play basketball, like a good urban liberal.

Golf is a dying game--on the skids for nearly a decade, according to a 2008 report by the National Golf Foundation. The number of Americans who golf has fallen by some four million.... One observed problem: evolving family dynamics. Men once free to spend all weekend on the links are now expected to help shuttle the kids to soccer, walk the dog, and generally pull their weight on the home front. The first lady may be understanding about her man’s special recreational needs. But does President Obama really want to be associated with a game so antithetical to modern life?

Cottle is really hostile to golf.  She doesn't mention Tiger Woods, but I'm sensing a Nordegrenesque female rage — even though Obama is as uxorious a politician as I've ever seen. Though Cottle presents herself as the modern woman, she's mouthing ancient female complaints. (What is less hip than a "golf widow" cartoon?)

Let the poor man play golf if he's too tired to look cool playing basketball, needs a long walk, and loves his fresh air well-mixed with tobacco smoke. As long as the golf course is close to the White House — leave him alone!