If there’s one thing I know from watching MSNBC*, even before Barack Obama took office, is that any criticism of him — any criticism, no matter how mild — was at its core, entirely “about hating a black man in the White House. This is racism straight up,” as a guest on the show hosted by the MSNBC anchor** Keith Olbermann said in April of 2009.
And any reference to golf is definitely racism double-plus straight up, as MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell declared on August 29th, 2012, on a show hosted by the MSNBC anchor*** Martin Bashir.
So when Maureen Dowd goofs on the president with a collection of bad golf jokes (link safe, goes to Twitchy), by the standards of her fellow Democrat operatives with bylines, it can mean only one thing: racism of the vilest sort.
How should the president respond? Perhaps the January 2010 issue of Golf Digest, which featured on its cover Tiger Woods caddying for Mr. Obama — the issue went to press about five minutes before the pristine MSM-airbrushed narratives of both men imploded for good — holds a clue. Golf Digest contributing editor John Feinstein wrote that one of the “10 Things Obama Might Learn From Tiger” was “How To Step On Their Necks:”
What makes Tiger Woods the most dominant athlete in the world (with apologies to Michael Phelps) isn’t so much his golf swing as what he does between golf swings. He’s cerebral in the sense that he lives to wear opponents out mentally every chance he gets.
President Obama surely knows how to compete. And yet, if you watched him debate John McCain, it was clear that Obama didn’t have Woods’ sense of the kill — knowing when an opponent is weak and the time is right to step on his neck. If Obama versus McCain had been match play, Obama wouldn’t have closed out his opponent until the 17th hole. When Stephen Ames made the mistake a few years ago of saying that he didn’t think Woods was quite as unbeatable as he had once been, he had the misfortune of facing Woods in the first round of a match-play event soon after. Woods won, 9 and 8. Asked post-match if he had anything to say about Ames’ comments, Woods smiled and said, “Nine and eight.”
President Obama should learn from Tiger. Sometimes you beat a guy 9 and 8, not 2 and 1. Teach him a lesson.****
That’s right — it’s time for Mr. Obama to teach Maureen Dowd a lesson, as her fellow MSMer demands of the president.
Either that, or it’s time for the rest of the media to come to grips with how misguided it’s been in its slavish throne-sniffing devotion to Mr. Obama. (QED: the notion of a rookie senator “teaching a lesson” to a former Navy pilot who spent years in a North Vietnamese prison camp by metaphorically “stepping on his neck” — completely forgetting how much McCain got of the real thing from the NVA. I wonder if Golf Digest’s editors, having outed themselves as crafting a publication that alienates half their potential readers feel any shame in retrospect at their hagiography?)
The right-hand side of the aisle has been making jokes about Mr. Obama’s since 2009 (see also, Photoshop at top of post from early 2011, when Mark Steyn dubbed Mr. Obama “President Plus-Fours.” Five years after taking office, as Glenn Reynolds notes today, finally, an exhausted “Obama has now reached the stage of his presidency where he’s consistently mocked by Maureen Dowd:”
For Republicans in the White House, this happens in January of their first year in office, but for Democrats it indicates a significant phase-change. This is because Dowd wants to be cool, which means that when she starts mocking a Dem President, it has become okay to do so even within the bubble occupied by Democratic pundits.
But “So how can you blame me for wanting to unwind on the course or for five hours at dinner with my former assistant chef? He’s a great organic cook, and he’s got a gluten-free backyard putting green.” Oh, my.
UPDATE: Judging from the comments, while Dowd might be regarded as a lagging indicator by people who are paying attention to politics, for the typical New York Times reader she’s actually a leading indicator. . . .
Which means they may be taking my headline seriously. To any of those reading the Times whom another of its columnists would call “the dance of the low-sloping foreheads,” please note that it’s meant in only the same level of gentle humor that the Times itself displays to those on the other side of the aisle.
* Well, watching YouTube clips of MSNBC. Does anyone actually watch the longform product of the network on television?
** Since departed under cloud of scandal.
*** Since departed under cloud of scandal.
**** Typed from my dog-eared copy purchased around Christmas of 2009 at Borders — remember them? — as Golf Digest quickly decided not to put any portion of their embarrassing prose online, once the mockery began to fly after Tiger Woods’ extramarital affair broke, forever shattering the untouchable, squeaky-clean, beyond reproach image the media willingly crafted for him. Hopefully no typos inserted during the transcription.
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