Great Continetti Piece: Obama's Endless Second-Term Summer

@rdbrewer4 has this in the sidebar (as does another cob), but in case you haven't read it...

The headline was brutal. "Bam's Golf War: Prez tees off as Foley's parents grieve," read the cover of Thursday's New York Daily News. Obama's gaffe was this: He had denounced the beheading of James Foley from a vacation spot in Martha's Vineyard, then went to the golf course. Seems like he had a great time....

Technically, Obama's vacation began on August 9. It is scheduled to end on Sunday, August 24. With the exception of a two-day interlude in D.C., it has been two weeks of golf, jazz, biking, beach going, dining out, celebrating, and sniping from critics, not all of them conservative, who are unnerved by the president taking time off at a moment of peril.

...

I disagree with the idea that this August has been different, in any meaningful way, from the rest of Obama's second term. For this president, the distinction between "time off" and "time on" is meaningless. For this president, every day is a vacation. And has been for some time. He is like Cosmo Kramer of Seinfeld. "His whole life is a fantasy camp," George Costanza says of his friend. "People should plunk down $2,000 to live like him for a week." Imagine what they would pay to live like Obama.

Continetti now establishes that Obama's "working time" is no different from his play time, noting all the #BearIsLoose shenanigans and rounds of "working time" golf and fundraisers and Star-Studded Celebrity Events and all the rest of it.

The below is mentioned in Continetti's piece, but I want to call it out.

You remember, I trust, that Obama actually took a break from his vacation to come back to Washington DC?

Did you assume, as I did, that he was coming back to DC to work?

Well... maybe a little, but even on his "time off from vacation" he got in a lot of vacation.

Per Continetti, that dinner party was five hours long. Five hours of his supposed forty eight hours back on the job (and of course deduct twenty hours from that for sleep and meals and other needs).

So, out of his 28 hours of supposedly being back in DC to "work," he spent five of them at a tony celebrity dinner party.

What the hell.

What the hell.

By the way, now that the New York Times has addressed Obama's Golf Grief Therapy on page A1 (!!!), I want to take this moment to accuse them of Dog Whistle Racism.

It's not really worth reading, by the way. But you know, they do deign to mention it.

posted by Ace at 03:51 PM

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