The One About Sometimes A Basketball Game Is Just A Basketball Game.

[Toriach]

(This article originally appeared at The One About...)

The One About Sometimes A Basketball Game Is Just A Basketball Game.

It has occurred to me for some time now, that one of the greatest weaknesses plaguing many of my fellow Liberal Progressives, is the tendency to spend more time picking over nits than focusing their energies working on more substantive matters. The recent kerfuffle over President Obama and his sports habits is just the latest and most glaring example.

(Click the headline to read the full article)
A recent article in the New York Times summarizes the situation perfectly.

...The suspicion flared in recent weeks — and not for the first time — after President Obama was criticized by women’s advocates and liberal bloggers for hosting a high-level basketball game with no female players.

So basically the problem seems to be that Obama likes to hang out with the boys in his “off” hours. Some people of course insist on extrapolating a larger problem as the article goes on to detail.

The technical foul over the all-male game has become a nagging concern for a White House that has battled an impression dating to the presidential campaign that Mr. Obama’s closest advisers form a boys’ club and that he is too frequently in the company of only men — not just when playing sports, but also when making big decisions.

The article then goes on to offer a fairly intelligent dissection of the perceived problem, and the countering logic that many within the Obama White House offer. My favorite two quotes come from women staffers.

Other women in the administration say that any discussion of White House culture should account for how politics has long been dominated by men but is now more inclusive. Ms. Dunn, who had to take a typing test three decades ago to work for a campaign, rejects the notion of a boys’ club. She calls the Obama administration “refreshingly un-self-conscious” about matters of equality, maybe to a point where they neglected the “optics” of the all-male basketball game.
Ms. Dunn said that she recently hosted a baby shower for an administration official and that no men from the office were invited. She is comfortable with that...

The simple fact of the matter is that since time out of mind, almost all men and women enjoy spending some time in the company of their own gender. And while certainly it would not hurt people to be more inclusive, to insist that something as simple as an off duty basketball game, only including one gender, means that all the other on duty aspects of Obama's White House are automatically suspect, is to my mind more than a bit specious. It seems to me sometimes, that my brothers and sisters in the Liberal Progressive world are attempting to hold Obama up to a standard so high that he is automatically doomed to fail and be damned for it. This quote especially seems to reek of such thinking.

One Democratic media strategist says that while Mr. Obama does place women in important roles, his comfort level with staff members is not always perceived as equal.
“There is a sense that Obama has a certain jocular familiarity with the men that he doesn’t have with the women,” said Tracy Sefl...”

So let me see if I've got this straight. Obama is to be condemned not for what he does, but the way he does it? Because in a culture where some people take oversensitivity to a new level of artistry, Obama might be more mindful of what he says to and around women than he might around his own gender, that automatically makes his attempts at creating a more gender-balanced staff meaningless? Because I'm sure that women speak completely freely and without any hesitation or unease around men. Right?

Frankly I'm reminded of my grandmother. When I was a young man I had a horrible temper. So I worked incredibly hard to gain control of it. And I had some success. So one day, full of self pride, I told my grandmother how much better I was doing. Her response, “But it's obvious control, everyone can see it.”

Finally then there is another point to ponder. The President seems to be offering a weak and wishy-washy defense of the public option, effectively selling out meaningful health care reform, just the same way that he has sold out the unions by failing to give any backing to the Employee Free Choice Act, or the way he has sold out those who had hoped he would at least manage to get us out of Iraq, and maybe just maybe out of Afghanistan too. Obama is quickly shaping up to be more politician than leader, and most of the “change” he's been bringing us so far, has not moved us anywhere far enough, nor fast enough from what has been done by recent presidents most notably Clinton, and Bush Jr. Yet Obama, and the gender make up of his basketball games is the most important thing some people can find to write about?

But by all means let's focus on who does or doesn't get to play basketball with the Prez. I'm sure that the thousands suffering and dying in sickness and poverty will be the first to laud your efforts on their behalf.

Keep The Faith My Brothers And Sisters!

The following resources were used in the creation of this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/us/politics/25vibe.html?_r=1&th&emc=th