As Jim Geraghty writes, “Forget the Rest of the World; President Personally Calls Some Athlete You Never Heard Of Before.”
Jim rounds up links and excerpts to too many stories for me to block quote here, and asks, “Hey, remember North Korea? They’re detaining a U.S. citizen…Remember Boston?…Remember Boston, again?…Remember the economy…?…National debt? $ 16,756,644,393,707.05,as of Friday. (That’s $16.7 trillion.)…Remember Obamacare?…”
With all of this going on, guess what the top story was on Memeorandum, measuring what bloggers and news sites are writing about?
An NBA player coming out of the closet as gay. Wait, there’s more:
A groundbreaking pronouncement from NBA veteran Jason Collins — “I’m gay” — reverberated Monday through Washington, generating accolades from lawmakers on Twitter and a supportive phone call from President Barack Obama.
Hours after Collins disclosed his sexuality in an online article, Obama reached out by phone, expressing his support and telling Collins he was impressed by his courage, the White House said.
Collins, 34, becomes the first active player in one of four major U.S. professional sports leagues to come out as gay. He has played for six teams in 12 seasons, including this past season with the Washington Wizards, and is now a free agent.
This president can’t get squat done about North Korea or Syria, and so he doesn’t want us to focus on those far-off lands. His policies have done diddlysquat for most of the long-term unemployed. He’s not interested in throwing people off public assistance, even when they don’t deserve it, and he wants to insist that every terror attack is a one-time occurrence, instead of connected bits of an international ideological movement dedicated to killing Americans. Obamacare’s a mess, and he’s hoping you don’t notice. The debt continues to increase, even with the alleged horrors of sequestration.
“God, gays and guns.” That’s what he’s got left. And that’s what he hopes stays on your mind, for as many days between now and November 2014 as possible.
As in 2012, it’s all about mobilizing the base on election day.
On the other hand, it may be tough to fire up the base when the POTUS has a sad. “ABC’s Jonathan Karl hurts Obama’s feelings,” Jim Treacher writes:
Jonathan Karl: Mr. President, you are 100 days into your second term. On the gun bill, you put, it seems, everything into it to try to get it passed. Obviously, it didn’t. Congress has ignored your efforts to try to get them to undo these sequester cuts. There was even a bill that you threatened to veto that got 92 Democrats in the House voting Yes. So, my question to you is: Do you still have the juice to get the rest of your agenda through this Congress?
President Barack Obama: Why, if you put it that way, Jon… Maybe I should just pack up and go home. Golly.
Or as Treacher paraphrases:
“If you put it that way,” meaning, “If you lay out the easily observable facts, plainly and clearly.”
And you should not do that, Jonathan Karl. It hurts Barry’s feelings. Sure, he’ll keep a stiff upper lip, make a little joke to ease the tension. But he’s really hurting inside, and it’s not fair to remind him how abjectly he’s failed.
I demand that ABC News fire Jonathan Karl for his unprofessional behavior. He’s there to help the Democrat in the White House, not ask him questions he doesn’t want to answer.
Heh. Yes, the benchmark for questioning POTUS #44 must remain the gold standard set by the New York Times’ Jeff Zeleny in 2009: “During these first 100 days, what has surprised you the most about this office? Enchanted you the most from serving in this office? Humbled you the most? And troubled you the most?”
Why on earth would the MSM want to harsh the presidential mellow with anything tougher? It’s enough to make a man reach for the smelling salts. Or the Choom Wagon.
Update: Jeff Dunetz features exclusive video of Obama’s latest press conference:
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