Posted on 06/10/2012 1:18:29 PM PDT by Kaslin
Exactly one month ago, the Washington Post published a 5,400 word front page hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's high school years which included a now infamous hair-cutting incident.
On Sunday, the Post devoted 5,500 words, beginning on the front page of the sports section, to an excerpt of David Maraniss's new book with the headline "President Obama’s Love for Basketball Can be Traced Back to His High School Team":
To say that President Obama loves basketball understates the role of the sport in his life. He has been devoted to the game for 40 years now, ever since the father he did not know and never saw again gave him his first ball during a brief Christmastime visit. Basketball is central to his self identity. It is global yet American-born, much like him. It is where he found a place of comfort, a family, a mode of expression, a connection from his past to his future. With foundation roots in the Kansas of his white forebears, basketball was also the city game, helping him find his way toward blackness, his introduction to an African American culture that was distant to him when he was young yet his by birthright.
Here's the front page of the sports section:
That article at the very top is the one in question with a picture of Obama with his high school basketball team.
This is what the editors of the Post's sports section thought was the most important story from Saturday, a day which included: Maria Sharapova winning the French Open and completing her lifetime Grand Slam; Union Rags winning the Belmont Stakes; the Miami Heat beating the Boston Celtics in game seven of the Eastern Conference NBA finals, and; the New Jersey Devils beating the Los Angeles Kings in game six of the NHL finals.
Nope. More important was President Obama's high school basketball days in Hawaii four decades ago.
It's not like Post readers hadn't heard about the current White House resident's teen years before. It published a 10,000 word piece about the junior senator from Illinois' past in August 2008.
Of course, you can't put 5,500 words on one page, so the post devoted all of pages D6 and D7 to the President's basketball past:
That article at the very top is the one in question with a picture of Obama with his high school basketball team.
This is what the editors of the Post's sports section thought was the most important story from Saturday, a day which included: Maria Sharapova winning the French Open and completing her lifetime Grand Slam; Union Rags winning the Belmont Stakes; the Miami Heat beating the Boston Celtics in game seven of the Eastern Conference NBA finals, and; the New Jersey Devils beating the Los Angeles Kings in game six of the NHL finals.
Nope. More important was President Obama's high school basketball days in Hawaii four decades ago.
It's not like Post readers hadn't heard about the current White House resident's teen years before. It published a 10,000 word piece about the junior senator from Illinois' past in August 2008.
Of course, you can't put 5,500 words on one page, so the post devoted all of pages D6 and D7 to the President's basketball past:
The headline at the top of page D6 read, "At Punahou, his first taste of winning, adoration."
Tough to get free advertising like that, isn't it?
As for the President's pot smoking in high school that Maraniss covered in some length in his book, that was actually relegated to the second to last sentence in the very last paragraph at the very end of this 5,500 word love letter (emphasis added):
Virtually none of this part of Obama’s basketball history was recorded in Dreams From My Father. Nor should that have been expected. Most anecdotes in his memoir flowed through the thematic stream of race. So the reader learned of a few jolting moments of awareness and understandable anger, such as when a JV coach flippantly used the word “niggers” to describe black players in a pickup game, and then lamely tried to differentiate them from people like Obama. The result was powerful storytelling. But what he left out unwittingly made it easier for political critics decades later to portray him as a stranger in their midst, whose life was outside the American mainstream -- a purposefully negative construct derived from distorted history. If there is a representative teenager’s life, Barry Obama lived a version of it in Hawaii in the late 1970s. Several things stood out -- he went to a prestigious school, he lived with his grandparents, his father was gone, his mother was infrequently present, he was a hapa black in a place where most people were a lighter shade of brown-- and those traits helped shape his particular character, but they did not make his life odd or mysterious. He smoked pot with his Choom Gang and goofed around outside the classroom, where he came across as smart and mature if not notably studious, but the central activity of his high school life was basketball. With equally strong roots in the Kansas of his ancestors and the playgrounds of black America, basketball connected the disconnected parts of him -- and he was good enough to play with “the best bunch of guys” on the best team in Hawaii, one of the best teams in the nation.
As NewsBusters reported back in August 2008, this was similar to how Obama's pot smoking was handled back then.
The author of that piece was - surprise, surprise! - David Maraniss.
Sick-making, isn't it?
It should go without saying that everyone at the Washington Post ought to be ashamed of this obvious campaigning for Barack Obama, and should seriously wonder if they're currently working for a newspaper or the committee to reelect the President.
Yeah well baseketball season doesn’t really get rolling that much again until after the Nov. election.
Then Zero can devote lots of time to it (if he can tear himself away from the golf course that is).
Roll the music.......”Basketball Jones” as featured by El Rushbo a few years ago.
Tyrone Shoelaces
The character in the early 70's song, "Basketball Jones" by Cheech and Chong.
Hmmmm....maybe with Who-sayin's dope smoking and B-ball, that video is the source of his king of the world fantasy.
search youtube for video
From looking at the pitcher it looks like he was on the girls team.
Not bad for a sub at a tiny private school.
Darn. Beat me by 27 seconds. Slow Blackberry connection at my end. Do catch the video. Funny
Yes, this article is just to warm people up for the upcoming blockbuster.
You are correct. Next week they are going to include with each copy of the WaPo a 1500 page (500,000 words) book entitled “Dick Obama’s Love Affair with Golf: and the Caddies who ‘Help Him Out’.”
The forward is by Mark Halperin. Those in the know say the book is non-political.
Loved BB? Gee you’d never know it to look at him, would ya?
==SNIP—
. . .A close associate hints: There's a secret compartment in Kerry's briefcase. He carries the black attaché everywhere. Asked about it on several occasions, Kerry brushed it aside. Finally, trapped in an interview, he exhaled and clicked open his case.
“Who told you?” he demanded as he reached inside. “My friends don't know about this.”
The hat was a little mildewy. The green camouflage was fading, the seams fraying.
“My good luck hat,” Kerry said, happy to see it. “Given to me by a CIA guy as we went in for a special mission in Cambodia.”
Kerry put on the hat, pulling the brim over his forehead. His blue button-down shirt and tie clashed with the camouflage. He pointed his finger and raised his thumb, creating an imaginary gun. He looked silly, yet suddenly his campaign message was clear: Citizen-soldier. Linking patriotism to public service. It wasn't complex after all; it was Kerry.
He smiled and aimed his finger: “Pow.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A59559-2003May30.html
He smiled and aimed his finger: “Pow.”
"Pathetic", I thought at the time it was published.
It's even more "pathetic" upon being repeated today.
Does the Post and Laura Blumenfeld believe their audience are idiots?
Well, yes...they do.
I’m surprised that he hasn’t brought back “MIDNIGHT BASKETBALL”
Wow...the Washington ComPost is losing its editorial edge. They have an obvious typo. What they apparently meant to write was “Nobama’s Homosexual Love Affair”.
So why does Barry look so much bigger than the rest of the team? Photoshop?
So why is picture of Barry clearer, has better contrast, darker? Photoshop?
So why does it look like Barry is wearing a different uniform than the rest of the team? Photoshop?
Why is everythig Barry is involved with seem fake?
F’ing wannabe.
Especially when I have often heard him described as very skinny back then.
Is the supposed Obama holding onto a basketball? The fellow in the front is. Are there usually two balls in a group photo?
It’s a composite! Dontchyaknow, /s
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