Tony Kornheiser celebrated becoming a senior citizen by playing a round of golf with the president.
AP (“Obama’s gift to ESPN’s Kornheiser is game of golf“):
President Barack Obama’s birthday gift to ESPN commentator Tony Kornheiser is a game of golf. With the president.
The White House said Obama teed off Saturday with Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon, co-hosts of the sports network’s “Pardon the Interruption” talk show. Saturday was Kornheiser’s 65th birthday.
Obama spent more than four hours at the golf course at the Army’s Fort Belvoir in Virginia, south of Washington. The president is an avid sports fan and viewer of ESPN programming.
Apparently, they didn’t use a cart.
Scanning the 68 comments thus far at YahooNews, most of the reactions are unhinged. But presidents of the United States have been playing golf since William Howard Taft’s day and getting to hang out with celebrities has long been one of the perks of the job. And, as I’ve noted many times here over the years, it’s a very good thing when our presidents allow themselves some down time; they don’t do it enough.
The one instance where commenters have a modest point is the optics of doing this at Fort Belvoir at a time when civilian employees of the Defense Department are having to absorb pay cuts through furloughs under sequestration. But I’m not sure exactly what the president is supposed to do about that. It takes two to tango and he and the House Republicans are miles apart.
