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Personally, I don't even care that Hayward went yachting. If I were his p.r. person I probably wouldn't have advised it, because a yachting event is certainly upper crust. But playing a round of golf on the Andrews Air Force Base course is in fact a fairly plebeian thing to do. It's not, by the way, some hyper-exclusive place. You can book your own tee time right here .
I always thought it was silly that Bush gave up golfing "during a time of war." What does that even mean? Does it mean he felt behooved to spent every waking hour thinking about our boys and girls in uniform, and if he were measuring up a 100-yard wedge he'd be so consumed with guilt that he was thinking about something other than our troops that he couldn't live with himself? Presumably, George Bush did other things during the war, like watch the occasional movie. Wasn't that in equally bad taste?
If he'd been that dedicated to our troops' welfare, I'd have preferred that Bush might have actually really thought about why in the hell he was sending them to Iraq in the first place, assuming he didn't actually believe that phony story he and the rest of them told us about mushroom clouds. And if golf crosses some line of proletarian taste, why was Bush even playing it in the first place?
People in pressure jobs need to relax. I think everyone grants this. It's just that it's golf, which carries posh connotations. If Obama were an inveterate swimmer, I don't think anyone would care. Although I'm sure the right would find something wrong with that. And tennis, fuggedaboudit, as they say in New York. Thank God he doesn't play that.
I think Obama should play more golf, and Michael Steele should most definitely go find some other stuff to do. Great-white shark hunting off the Barrier Reef, maybe.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/michaeltomasky/2010/jun/21/barack-obama-golf