I’ll admit it: I don’t play or follow sports. Any sports. Not the one with the orange ball and the circle to throw it through; not the one with the stick and the ball and the squares the players jump on; and definitely not the one where they use the sticks to hit the tiny balls into little holes in the grass.
Contrary to all this, I love the Olympics and good inspirational sports movie will make me misty every damn time, but that’s not our point here.
In spite of my near-total lack of interest in sports, I do enjoy recreation. This would be because I am a human being and all work and no play makes Jack…you know.
But oh, do Americans love to harass their president for taking time off, and we’re not afraid to politicize it. Republicans pundits are busy hassling President Obama because he has played 100 golf games since he took office, most recently just yesterday. Their frothing at the mouth is as ridiculous as it is predictable. They describe the president as self-indulgent (perpetually, no less) and lazy.
I’m waiting for someone to criticize President Obama for having bodily functions, or for leaving his office to eat his meals instead of having nutrition delivered intravenously. And how dare he sleep? What kind of a lazy slug of a president is this, who dares to stop working, ever?
Remember when President GW Bush gave up golf “for the soldiers”? I have no idea how his abstention from the game helped anyone (and he certainly wasn’t averse to recreation and vacation for himself, in spite of eschewing golf), but the conservative pundits certainly enjoyed it.
This “story” (and I’d argue that there’s nothing here except people making money off of heating up the far right) is more evidence of how ridiculous much of our political media has become, creating issues where issues don’t exist. So the president plays golf more weekends than not. It doesn’t matter.
The lesson, too, is this: whether conservative or liberal, we need to stop and think about whether we would criticize a president on the other side for the same thing. If not, we’re fuming for no good reason, and there is plenty to worry about without making stuff up.
Andrea
06/18/2012
I suspect the lazy thing is mostly because he’s black. that old stereotype.
I agree, but I have to say, if all they have to critiize is his golf or his ancestry, they really don’t have much at all.
Sarah
06/18/2012
Agreed. Golf? Ancestry? You’ve got nothing, people! Bush the second took the most vacation of any president. Unless there’s some public nudity in a restroom (or on Twitter), a good old sex scandal, or selling secrets to the Russians (for Putin’s zombie ray gun, of course), attack the issues, and not the person.
Adrienne
06/18/2012
See, and even as much as I despised everything about the Bush presidency, I thought the complaints about the time he spent on his ranch were silly. It’s not like he couldn’t work from Texas sometimes. There was plenty to complain about without bringing up frivolities like that.
Jim
06/19/2012
As a Republican it was almost worse having my candidate in office. Possibly I’ve checked out of the political scene in disgust as a result of that time, but it doesn’t seem like Obama has been subjected to the same level of malice and scrutiny that junior got.
That said, maybe he’s just a way better President. I don’t know. I kinda don’t think so. It IS possible it’s the same. . . but I stopped paying attention so it seems like less.
The constant full court press of criticism the president takes is RIDICULOUS. Whether he’s liberal/conservative/other. But it’s politics. You know the gig when you start campaigning, and nobody knows it better than someone who campaigned for the highest office.
Even reading the comments here. . . make me want to do research and rebut, but ultimately. . . what difference does it make? There are plenty of reasons to criticize Obama. Plenty of reasons to criticize Bush. And they’ve all been vocalized, or will be.