The Jerk
Is it just THE SCRAPBOOK, or is the new president turning out to be a bit of a jerk? Exhibit A: Obama's failed joke on the Tonight show about his bowling ineptness (he's up to 129!) being comparable to what a disabled athlete would manage. "It's like--it was like Special Olympics, or something," Obama told Jay Leno. Yes, he apologized before the taped show even made it on the air. But for a striking contrast in tone, you should search on YouTube for the video of Sarah Palin warmly and cheerfully addressing the participants in this year's Special Olympics, all the while dandling disabled son Trig in her lap.
In what we can only hope is a sign of things to come, the press for once didn't roll over on its collective back to have its stomach rubbed by its hero and master. An enterprising AP reporter tracked down the Special Olympics bowling champ, who will clearly smoke the First Bowler once he scores the inevitable invitation to the White House:
The top bowler for the Special Olympics looks forward to meeting President Barack Obama in an alley. "He bowled a 129. I bowl a 300. I could beat that score easily," Michigan's Kolan McConiughey . . . told The Associated Press in an interview Friday. . . . McConiughey, who is mentally disabled . . . [has] bowled five perfect games since 2005. The 35-year-old McConiughey has been bowling since he was 8 or 9. His advice for Obama? Practice every day.
The British press, meanwhile, continues to make hay out of Exhibit B: Obama's gift to Prime Minister Gordon Brown of a cheesy set of DVDs containing 25 American movies. No. 10 Downing Street has not been shy about leaking details of the embarrassing contrast in thoughtfulness between the PM's gift to Obama and what he got in return. Brown might as well have come home to London wearing a T-shirt: "I went on a visit to Washington to see our oldest and most important ally, and all I got was this lousy set of DVDs."
To review: When Brown lunched with Obama at the White House on March 3, he brought with him as a token of esteem for the president a pen holder carved from the wood of the HMS Gannet, one of the British ships that helped stamp out the slave trade in the 19th century . There was an echo in this of a more famous gift: that of Queen Victoria to President Rutherford B. Hayes of a desk, made from the timbers of the HMS Resolute, a vessel of the British Royal Navy that had been rescued from Arctic ice by an American whaler. The Resolute desk, with the exception of a couple of presidents, has held pride of place in the Oval Office ever since (it's the one featured in the famous photo of John-John Kennedy playing at his father's feet), and Obama sits behind it today.
Brown also brought along a first-edition of Martin Gilbert's seven-volume biography of Winston Churchill, as well as thoughtful gifts for the Obama daughters. In return, there were toy models of the presidential helicopter for Brown's two boys, and the aforementioned DVDs.
Meanwhile, when a reporter for the Telegraph asked why there was no formal dinner, as befits a visit from the British prime minister, a spokesman for the Obama State Department--you remember them, sophisticated, cultured, ready to repair the damage to our alliances supposedly caused by the cowboy from Texas?--replied: "There's nothing special about Britain. You're just the same as the other 190 countries in the world. You shouldn't expect special treatment."
Indeed. But how about minimally decent treatment? Brown, not known to be a film buff (for one thing, his eyesight is failing), finally sat down last week to have a look at the notorious DVDs. According to the Telegraph's Tim -Walker, there was a problem. "The films only worked in DVD players made in North America and the words 'wrong region' came up on his screen."
Walker added: "When Obama's unlikely gift was disclosed, a reader emailed me to ask if Clueless was among the films. Funnily enough, it was not."
Teleprompter-in-Chief
The best new humor site of the Obama era bills itself "Barack Obama's Teleprompter's Blog: Reflections from the Hard Drive of the Machine that Enables the Voice of the Leader of the Free World" (baracksteleprompter.blogspot.com).
Obama's teleprompter, aka TOTUS, filed a dispatch from L.A. after the Special Olympics gaffe:
Okay, I see the bus coming right at me, so let's be clear: this was His ad lib. . . . It's days like this that make me miss the days when He and I would walk the streets of Chicago, doing community activism. Sure, it took Him 30 minutes to set me up, and sometimes he couldn't get the extension cord to reach an electrical outlet, or the folks he wanted to talk to would walk off because they had better things to do, or the glare off my screen made his remarks unreadable. But it was a simpler time, when he could stay on script and didn't feel the need to "speak his mind," and we were a team. All I know, is it's going to be a long flight home.
Obama's Bracket
Now that the fundamentals of the American economy are strong, or sound, or whatever, President Obama was able to make time last week for an interview with ESPN's Andy Katz to talk about his picks for the NCAA basketball tournament. For his part, Katz came away gushing about the president's level of knowledge, writing afterward that Obama was "as educated and knowledgeable" as any professional basketball analyst.
Obama went on camera with Katz in the Map Room, where he worked out his picks on a whiteboard and, unlike most politicians, who view these types of exercises as opportunities to pander, Obama seemed to have put some thought into his bracket. He picked VCU over UCLA in a big first-round upset (because he believes the PAC 10 is having a down year). In picking Pittsburgh over Duke in the Elite 8, Obama noted that despite Duke's "skilled perimeter players, they just don't have the muscle inside. I think [Pitt's DeJuan] Blair is going to eat them up." In picking Syracuse over Oklahoma, a late-round upset, Obama explained, "The problem with Oklahoma, they have the player of the year [Blake Griffin], but they play, like, seven guys. I think you start getting worn down."
For his Final Four, Obama picked UNC, Louisville, Pittsburgh, and Memphis, with North Carolina as his projected winner. At the end of the interview with Katz, Obama turned to the camera to address the UNC players directly: "Now, for the Tar Heels who are watching, I picked you all last year--you let me down. This year, don't embarrass me in front of the nation, all right?"
The president's priorities never change.
Just a Rounding Error These Days
"An article on Wednesday about the impact of the recession on country clubs misquoted Joe Beditz, the president and chief executive of the National Golf Foundation, who said the sport was doing relatively well. He described golf as 'a $40 billion industry,' not '$400 billion' " (correction in the New York Times, March 20).
Sentences We Didn't Finish
"When I withdrew from consideration to be secretary of health and human services, some pundits said health reform had received a devastating blow. While it would be flattering for me to believe that, it would also be completely wrong. Those pundits were wrong because of the great team that President Obama has assembled. . . . " ("Health Reform's Moment," by Thomas A. Daschle, Washington Post, March 20).