October 27, 2009--Obama & the Guys
Two contrasting photos from Sunday’s New York Times—
On the front page there was one of Barack Obama seemingly suspended in air as he is about to launch a jump shot during one of his frequent pickup basketball game. The second, buried on the next to last page of the Sports section is from early in the 20th century. It depicts James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, holding a wooden fruit basket aloft, the literal “basket,” while his wife Maude, six or seven feet away, prepares to take what appears to be a version of an underhand foul shot. (See linked article and photo below of the Naismiths on the campus of the W.M.C.A. Training School in Springfield, Mass.)
And while Obama is getting all sorts of grief from women’s groups that he is showing his sexist side by recreating with only other fellows, from the photographic evidence it appears that the inventor of Obama’s most beloved sport, Dr. Naismith, was clearly a proto-feminist and way ahead of his time.
The criticism of Obama (criticism of him is growing by the day—check the cover story of this week’s Newsweek as another example: how he is thus far failing to deliver on his campaign promises) there is more at issue than who is invited to join him in his daily basketball game.
A growing number of women are beginning to express concern that he is not sufficiently surrounded in his inner circle by women. With the exception of Valerie Jarrett, an old pal from his Chicago days, pretty much everyone else is a guy. And guys they surely are. The testosterone level in the West Wing is noted to be especially high. Rahm Emanuel is virtually oozing it and even the hemming and hawing Robert Gibbs, his press secretary, employs at least half a dozen sports analogies and metaphors a day at his public briefings.
This not only looks bad, it is claimed, but it more importantly means that Obama is not receiving the diversity of gendered opinion required if he is going to be a new kind of accessible, empathetic, transparent president. We know what Bill Clinton was up to while surrounded by a women or two during his White House days, but at least when he went jogging he was smart enough to occasionally invite some woman to join him. Golfing while smoking cigars was another matter, but at least he was an equal opportunity jogger.
Obama’s mantra, Change You Can Believe In, from the perspective of who he hangs out with, looks pretty much like business as usual. Ironically, some of his highest-level female appointees— UN ambassador Susan Rice and Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, both played college basketball. And as Secretary Sibelius pointed out the other day when asked about Obama’s locker room behavior, she quipped that she and Susan Rice made their college varsity teams—Obama, in contrast, she winked wasn’t even a third-stringer at Columbia.
Digging a little deeper into the history of basketball’s origins, I learned that Dr Naismith invented the game in 1891 when challenged by his boss to come up with something with which to keep rowdy W.M.C.A. boys occupied during long Massachusetts winters.
From this, though I am sympathetic that Obama and other presidents, considering their daily pressures, should be allowed to blow off steam in pretty much any politically incorrect ways they choose, perhaps during his current deliberations about what to do next in Afghanistan, if he wants to resist pressure from the hawks to send tens of thousands of additional troops to the region, perhaps during breaks in their discussions, he should invite his Secretary of State out to shoot a few hoops since, from reports about her macho views, Hillary Clinton could use a little calming down.
On the front page there was one of Barack Obama seemingly suspended in air as he is about to launch a jump shot during one of his frequent pickup basketball game. The second, buried on the next to last page of the Sports section is from early in the 20th century. It depicts James Naismith, the inventor of basketball, holding a wooden fruit basket aloft, the literal “basket,” while his wife Maude, six or seven feet away, prepares to take what appears to be a version of an underhand foul shot. (See linked article and photo below of the Naismiths on the campus of the W.M.C.A. Training School in Springfield, Mass.)
And while Obama is getting all sorts of grief from women’s groups that he is showing his sexist side by recreating with only other fellows, from the photographic evidence it appears that the inventor of Obama’s most beloved sport, Dr. Naismith, was clearly a proto-feminist and way ahead of his time.
The criticism of Obama (criticism of him is growing by the day—check the cover story of this week’s Newsweek as another example: how he is thus far failing to deliver on his campaign promises) there is more at issue than who is invited to join him in his daily basketball game.
A growing number of women are beginning to express concern that he is not sufficiently surrounded in his inner circle by women. With the exception of Valerie Jarrett, an old pal from his Chicago days, pretty much everyone else is a guy. And guys they surely are. The testosterone level in the West Wing is noted to be especially high. Rahm Emanuel is virtually oozing it and even the hemming and hawing Robert Gibbs, his press secretary, employs at least half a dozen sports analogies and metaphors a day at his public briefings.
This not only looks bad, it is claimed, but it more importantly means that Obama is not receiving the diversity of gendered opinion required if he is going to be a new kind of accessible, empathetic, transparent president. We know what Bill Clinton was up to while surrounded by a women or two during his White House days, but at least when he went jogging he was smart enough to occasionally invite some woman to join him. Golfing while smoking cigars was another matter, but at least he was an equal opportunity jogger.
Obama’s mantra, Change You Can Believe In, from the perspective of who he hangs out with, looks pretty much like business as usual. Ironically, some of his highest-level female appointees— UN ambassador Susan Rice and Kathleen Sibelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, both played college basketball. And as Secretary Sibelius pointed out the other day when asked about Obama’s locker room behavior, she quipped that she and Susan Rice made their college varsity teams—Obama, in contrast, she winked wasn’t even a third-stringer at Columbia.
Digging a little deeper into the history of basketball’s origins, I learned that Dr Naismith invented the game in 1891 when challenged by his boss to come up with something with which to keep rowdy W.M.C.A. boys occupied during long Massachusetts winters.
From this, though I am sympathetic that Obama and other presidents, considering their daily pressures, should be allowed to blow off steam in pretty much any politically incorrect ways they choose, perhaps during his current deliberations about what to do next in Afghanistan, if he wants to resist pressure from the hawks to send tens of thousands of additional troops to the region, perhaps during breaks in their discussions, he should invite his Secretary of State out to shoot a few hoops since, from reports about her macho views, Hillary Clinton could use a little calming down.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
5:33 AM
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