The instant controversy swirling around President Obama's Tonight Show
joke/gaffe about bowling as though he were in the Special Olympics is
another indicator of the hypersensitive times we live in — not so much
because anyone from the Special Olympics even complained, but because,
according UPI and
other sources, members of the White House spin machine had swung into
action clarifying the President remarks two hours before they were
aired on the East Coast. Sort of like preparing and dressing a wound
before the bullet had actually struck.
But Obama's problems with bowling extend further back than last night
— at least to the moment when he callously announced in an “off-hand”
remark that he might rip out the White House bowling lanes and
replace them with an indoor basketball court. Outrage quickly spread
across the Republic — or at least, that part of it that still clung to
guns, religion and bowling.
Syndicated sports columnist Couch Slouch, aka Norman Chad, captured the mood of this part of America with an open letter to the president, which he began by recalling
then-candidate Obama's stiff bowling performance during one campaign
stop in blue-collar Pennsylvania (see video above):
“You didn't look like
you were about to roll a bowling ball,” the Slouch wrote last month,
“you looked like you were about to change a baby's diapers. Your
release point was all wrong. You were playing the wrong board. You're
the leader of the free world — bowl like it, buddy!”
But perhaps
there's a poltergeist dwelling in the White House's bowling alley that
is hostile to Obama and his guests. Earlier this month the president
had invited members of the Chicago Bulls basketball team to try their
bowling skills at the White House. From all reports they fared disastrously.
“I'm terrible,” the L.A. Times quoted
Derrick Rose, before continuing its coverage:
“Joakim Noah called his effort 'not great, but it was just something
that I'll be able to tell my grandkids and tell my whole family. I
think I hit one pin, but my swagger was just unbelievable.'”
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