Friday, March 20, 2009

Why Barack-etology is a good thing


I really don't think that the free world is an anymore trouble than it already is if Barack Obama takes some time out to fill out a bracket for ESPN. Really, if some real damage was going to go down, it was going to happen regardless of that missing half hour. Hell, I bet he spends more time than that in the bathroom.

Actually, I'm more impressed that this man can find the time to be this knowledgable about college basketball while rebuilding the economy, getting us out of Iraq, curing cancer, walking on water, all the stuff that he does. It's not like he's falling behind on things. If he was turning in his budgets late and missing press conferences because he was copying someone else's notes at the last minute, the complainers might be onto something. But he's getting everything done, so why are we bothering him? If anything, we should be impressed with his time-management skills.

Most of us can't even make it to work on time every day and we're worried about what he's doing.

At the very least, this helps him relate to people more, because it shows that he's just as sports-crazy as the rest of us. The only difference between me and Barack Obama right now is that he has the respect and admiration of a nation and I picked California to beat Maryland against my better judgment. Really, at the time of this writing, I'm doing better than he is.

Republicans are just jealous they didn't think of this kind of thing first, because George W. Bush or Sarah Palin would kill for this kind of publicity. Barack Obama filling out his bracket on ESPN or actually getting upset that OUR Beloved Bulls were getting beat by the Washington Wizards are the kinds of things that will endear us to him. When he leaves office, assuming his presidency isn't a complete disaster, this sort of thing will make us think about him and smile. Truly the People's President, Barack Obama.

Bush, on the other hand, we forgot about him while he was still sitting the White House. And this guy owned the Texas Rangers once upon a time. But he was so busy clearing brush off of his ranch in Crawford that he forgot to show us what a real guy he was. People always talked about what a great guy he was, but we never saw it. Maybe if he had publicly done things like this, we would have looked at him a little differently. I'm not saying we would have supported all of his policies, because I just don't think that repealing our civil liberties was a smart idea. But maybe, just maybe, we wouldn't have looked at him like he had no idea what was going on in the real world.

Bush's friends always talked about Bush being "the kind of guy you could have a beer with," but we never really saw it. In one 10-minute segment, Barack showed us that he IS that guy, because even though he's meeting with the Prime Minster of Russia while we're breaking our back for some boss that we don't like, we know that at 11 PM, when SportsCenter comes on, our President is just another sports-obsessed boob. Just like us.

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