It’s hard for me to discuss a president throwing out the first ball without thinking of this Chris Matthews gem about George W. Bush’s “grace under pressure”:
Either you can throw a strike from sixty feet or you can’t. Either you can rise to the occasion on the mound at Yankee Stadium with 56,000 people watching or you can’t. On Tuesday night, George W. Bush hit the strike zone in the House that Ruth Built…. This is about knowing what to do at the moment you have to do it–and then doing it. It’s about that ‘grace under pressure’ that Hemingway gave as his very definition of courage.
I’m not a Tweety hater. But he and the rest of the media sure went batshit crazy for a while there.
Stooleo
Oh the inanity..
mantis
Let me out!
rob!
I’m getting a thrill up my leg just thinking about that great moment in American history: Bush throwing a goddamn baseball.
Fergus Wooster
Watching a good friend scream. . .
edit: Damn you mantis, you beat me.
MikeJ
What’s holding you back?
FlipYrWhig
IIRC that ceremonial first pitch was the featured event in the short film that was played before Bush’s speech at the 2004 Republican Convention. They made a HUGE HAIRY DEAL about it.
Aaron
But, in hindsight, shouldn’t we have known? Be it Yankee Stadium, Iraq, or Afghanistan, Bush was all about hitting the strike zones.
maus
When did they stop and begin being responsible individuals who stopped worshiping at the foot of crazy and harmful politicians?
Persia
Anybody have that video footage of Bush reading “My Pet Goat” handy?
fishboots
It always amazed me, the amount of fluffing Dubya got when he managed to do something half way competent, and the reeeaaching done to metaphor him into a competent President.
I get the feeling the press saw him as their own pet project.
David in NY
Mission Accomplished:
MattF
Yeah, there was something… unusual going on there. I know I wasn’t the only person who looked at Bush and saw a zero, but it sure felt that way, for a while.
MattR
Well, Tweety was factually accurate with his statement.
Bush’s throw was impressive and uplifting. But of course the problem is that being able to throw a strike wearing a bullet proof vest has nothing to do with being a good President or leader.
El Cid
Not that they don’t tend to worship bold, brash right wing asshat Presidents anyway, but a lot of major media figures were scared shitless by 9/11 and really did want a Big Daddy.
SpotWeld
Does Chris Matthews have some sort of “daddy issues”… it’s like this guy is in serious need of a cowboy “father figure”.
It’s starting to get a little disturbing
Tonal Crow
A Republican is a hero if he manages to throw a strike on opening day.
Conversely, a Democrat is a treasonous failure if he rescues America from a depression and greatly improves our health care system.
I get it.
SpotWeld
The ability to throw a pitch into a strike zone is a nifty thing to have in a President, but (to paraphrase Neil Gaiman)… “but it’s about as useful as the ability to regurgitate whole lobsters.”
Rosalita (Formerly GReynoldsCT00)
I AM a Tweety-hater. Guy drives me nuts.
Mike in NC
All they wanted to do was sit down and have a beer with a dry drunk.
Surly Duff
Well, that is extremely useful if you own a Red Lobster. Or if you want to impress someone at a Presidential dinner.
catclub
So that’s why FDR was such a failure as president.
No fastball.
slippy
Is it just me or does the deadly obvious have to be pointed out:
I mean, if I were evaluating a President with this kind of ridiculous criteria, I’d be asking shit like how well he could hold the downbeat on an upright bass, or whether or not he knew how to safely shut down an AIX server, or how long he’s ever had to sleep outdoors in nothing more than a nylon tent, or how quickly he could row 40,000 kilometers on a Concept rowing machine, or how competently he can perform Osoto Gari on an opponent.
I don’t think it could fucking matter less. How good a President was Bush?
He was FUCKING awful.
Brian J
Maybe it’s because I really am a Islamofascist commie, or maybe it’s because aside from tennis and simply running I can’t play any sports* without making a complete and utter fool of myself, but I honestly couldn’t give less of a shit about the president throwing out a baseball. Nor can I imagine why so many others, even those who are sports fanatics, remain obsessed with it. It has virtually no bearing on, well, anything at all. It’s just puzzling why rational adults care about this.
*Just to give you some indication of my athletic skill: when I went to catch a baseball at second base in little league once, it hit me right in the teeth. In my defense, the last couple of times I’ve been asked to hit a baseball, I’ve smacked the shit out of it, although if you saw my pose you wouldn’t be able to stop laughing.
sukabi
personally, I don’t give a flying fig if the POTUS can throw a strike from 60 ft. with 60K folks watching or not… also don’t care if he’s a total spaz when it comes to bowling…
I do care very much if the POTUS has enough intelligence to keep the country from being run into the ditch every time some asshole with a small dick decides that it would be fun to blow some other country up because said country might have some resource that they (tiny dicks) want to exploit for their own personal gain.
I also care that the POTUS and his team realize that they work FOR ALL THE PEOPLE, and not just the corporations / rich.
I also care that Tweety and his cohorts in cable and dead tree media thinks it’s their job to give rhetorical blow jobs to the powerful, instead of focusing on the real substantive issues that will affect the direction of this country.
catclub
“This is about knowing what to do at the moment you have to do it—and then doing it.”
Someone else already mentioned staying focussed: reading ‘My Pet Goat’.
lovable liberal
Wet dreaming of their very own cult of personality…
trollhattan
What? A dude who once owned a baseball team can throw a baseball in front of a stadium crowd? Whodathunk?
If only he’d once owned a brain factory instead of a baseball team.
D0n Camillo
No fucking way would I ever have trusted him to shut down an Aix server, let alone lead a country. I still can’t figure out why it wasn’t more obvious to the rest of the country what a potentially harmful sack of shit he was.
Pangloss
Last week he had a closing comment that sounded like he wanted to exhume Reagan’s bones to use in a bizzare auto-erotic sex ritual.
The Grand Panjandrum
Why do these guys always forget about Bush’s “grace under pressure” moment on 9/11? Bush spent the entire day running around the country from bunker to bunker. He’s candy ass chickenshit frat boy. Fuck him. Oh, and fuck Tweety the drunken, twelve sandwich eating, fawning cretin deserves every cursed bad thing that comes his way.
Ash Can
Yeah, and Iraq and our military got stuck with the psychotherapist’s bill.
beltane
All this means is that Bush would have made a better little league coach than president. This may come as a surprise to Chris Matthews, but there are not too many little league coaches who are cut out to be President of the United States, even though most of them would have been an improvement over George Bush.
cleek
gay
stuckinred
baseball ain’t shit, he can hit the j.
stuckinred
beltane
Being able to play a sport and coaching children are wildly different.
eric
I think they should just compare “packages” and call it a day.
shoot me.
Erik Vanderhoff
DougJ, I just have to say, you’ve been on fire with the post titles lately. Dig the Queen/David Bowie reference.
eric
Doug: how about a new title for the post “That Deaf, Dumb, and Blind Kid……”
maybe he should be president.
KS in MA
Yeah, but could W hit a 3-pointer from the corner?
Undercover FBI Agent DougJ
@Erik Vanderhoff
Thanks.
Surly Duff
Hell, he couldn’t even kick a soccer ball.
twiffer
did these dimwits forget that bush played college ball at yale? had nothing to do with ‘grace under pressure”, he just happened to be a good ballplayer. not as good as fidel castro though.
Elie
Tonal Crow @ 16 —
Yeah — that’s it — sadly…
I think someday we will look back on this period as one of great absurdity — absurd is the only way I can characterize the strange values and beliefs that we are witnessing. All rational standards and performance criteria are completely dislodged — like some change in the magnetic poles…
Mark S.
This reminds me of a headline in the Onion’s Our Dumb Century about FDR: “Why Does Our Joyless President Never Dance?”
eric
I think Americans want a president that has done blow and whose spouse has killed a man. Works for me.
AnotherBruce
I think I outgrew this crap when I was about 12 years old.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Elie #43:
Not snarking here, I’m curious: what is the baseline you are measuring against, that was the golden age of sweet reason and rational discussion and debate? Can you define a span of years or period of leadership which is the marker for measuring our present level of insanity? And what made it so?
Eric S.
For the love of FSM! It’s 60 feet, 6 inches. I guess I should know better than to expect these media types to check the facts though.
Omnes Omnibus
Twiffer @ 42. W was a cheerleader. His dad played ball at Yale. W was a failed National Guard pilot. His dad was a decorated WWII Navy pilot.
Someone besides Tweety had daddy issues.
Patriot 3
@ Persia
on request
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro3o-ld0CWw&feature=related
Why is this guy not in prison?
Ruckus
So let me get this straight.
According to the beltway hacks, if I can throw a strike wearing a flak jacket, in a packed stadium and no hitter who might send it back down my throat, I’m qualified to be president?
And that’s all it takes?
Maude
The msm was comfy with Bush because he was stupid.
Bob L
What was always so bizarre about the presses Bush love was I always got the impression from the Conservatives I knew that for the most part they saw Bush as the lesser of two evils in both elections. It always seemed to be “Oh NOZ NOT Gore” or “Not Kerry” never “go Bush”. McCain thought he could primary Bush in 2004 before 911.
arguingwithsignposts
@Omnes:
No word on whether he played ball at Yale, but Wiki says he did play in high school.
Ash Can
@Ruckus: No, you have to affect a Texas accent, too.
Facebones
I have no desire to search for the link, but didn’t Tweety once rhapsodize about the way he thought Fred Thompson would smell? Something about old leather and saddles… ew.
Sly
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ
I don’t think periods of profound insanity need to be judged against some ideal, whether that ideal is a fairy tale or reality. Rather, I think we’re just so caught up in the intensity of the insanity that even other periods, though not sane by any rational standpoint, appear sane by comparison. I’d certainly say that the Bush years made the periods immediately preceeding and proceeding it appear like “a golden age of sweet reason and rational discourse and debate”.
Elie
That Left Turn @ 47 —
I see your point — and while I acknowledge that there has always been some crazyness — would you allow that we are in a period of exaggerated craziness? Or are you trying to say that its always been this way? If that is the case, how did this country tolerate a President in a wheelchair?
flukebucket
That is a lot tougher than just being 35 years old and a natural born citizen.
Ruckus
@Ash Can
Crap, that leaves me out. It’s always something.
Mark S.
Bush, Sr played baseball at Yale. Sr was a pretty damn good athlete. I saw him playing some celebrity tennis match with Chris Evert on TV about a decade ago. Bush could barely move (he’s obviously has some knee problems), but he could knock the hell out of the ball.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Elie #58:
I wasn’t trying to puncture your observation via backhanded sarcasm; I’m asking a non-rhetorical question. I myself am not sure if maybe the Bush years were worse than just about anything in our prior history (with perhaps one or two exceptions), but perhaps that is just presentism talking. Some days I think yes, some days no, depending on where my focus is. I’m asking, what do you (and others here) think, and why?
Ruckus
@flukebucket
Still I think I can manage it but Ash Can reminded us that it also requires at least being able to fake a Texas accent.
Among other things.
kay
They would have turned anyone who was President on 9-11 into a Strong Leader. They needed that narrative.
What was the alternative? “No one really believes this guy is up for this, but he’s what we got!”
My problem was how they insisted on following that narrative well beyond its limited usefulness. They fell in love with their own story.
MattR
When Obama speaks, this is what wingnuts hear
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFY2kJ96jNY
geg6
In defense of Tweety, here’s Tweety having some fun at Limbaugh’s expense:
http://www.sadlyno.com/archives/29831.html
You can’t stay pissed off at a guy who knows about underwater walruses.
Mark S.
I hate when I does things like that.
stuckinred
There is no kind of history other than prior history.
Nethead Jay
I’m just gonna go for the obvious metaphor here and say, damn that title knocks it out of the park. What else is there to say about that piece of absurd babble from Tweety.
But as an antidote to that whole wrongness, here’s a clip of Bowie doing Under Pressure live i came across recently: Youtube
mistersnrub
I would love to see Limbaugh or Beck throw a baseball. Let’s see it boys, let’s see those super manly rocket arms you both possess.
different church-lady
I can forgive people for being crazy in the immediate wake of Sept. 11.
I can’t forgive them for still being crazy nine years later.
WereBear
No one ever cared about Carter’s curveball, or how Bush I handled the pitch. It only makes sense if they were told to make a fuss over competence, as though to distract from other things where he wasn’t.
But that’s just kooky talk
Persia
@ Patriot 3
Because cowardice is legal.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
they are still wiping tweety tadpoles off the camera lenses when Bush strutted the flat boat with his fighter pilot jock gear on.
WereBear
I am old enough to remember watching Vietnam news. And people were shocked about Watergate. These events were often skewed and unlikely, but nothing has had the Alice-in-Wonderland quality of the W years.
Nothing.
geg6
OT, but we have an arrest in one of the many instances of Dem legislators being threatened during the battle and after HCR passed. Sen. Patty Murray is the victim in this case and here’s the complaint:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/waw/press/2010/apr/pdfs/wilson%20complaint.pdf
Whaddaya know? Asshole claims he’s on Social Security.
Resident Firebagger
ESPN has been rerunning that W.-wears-a-Yankee-jacket-over-his-flak-jacket-and-throws-a-ball clip for years, as if it was something significant in the history of baseball, or New York baseball, I don’t know. They may have rerun it yesterday for all I know, but I wasn’t watching. Whenever I surf by an ESPN channel and hear that douche Colin Cowturd, I boycott the network for the next week.
As for Chris Matthews, he is just butt nuts…
PurpleGirl
Elie @ 58: If that is the case, how did this country tolerate a President in a wheelchair?
Most people didn’t see FDR in his wheelchair, even if they knew he used one. His people and the media of his day both conspired to not show him in the chair. FDR also taught himself how to stand to give speeches. And there was no TV — a radio broadcast doesn’t show you a visual image.
WereBear
True, PurpleGirl@78. They also did not report JFK fooling around, though that was more of a glass houses thing.
Ruckus
@different church-lady
I can’t forgive them. It was their job not to be batshit crazy after 9/11. Many, many people didn’t go batshit then, fire, police, the pilot of the airliner I was on, the passengers of that plane and there many, many more examples. The plain fact is we pay a lot of people not to go batshit in the face of pressure. Including the executive branch of our government, from the top on down. Add one more failure to the pile.
Randy P
Matthews is just a weird, weird dude.
Isn’t he the guy who stopped a financial reporter in the middle of a report and asked her come closer to the camera so he could tell her she was pretty and pretty much ignore anything she actually had to SAY?
Ruckus
@WereBear
I am old enough to be of voting age during the Vietnam era and as bad as it was you are correct, king george was far, far worse.
I always understood the W stood for Worst.
JGabriel
MattR: Nicely played.
.
Patriot 3
Werebear @ 75 and Ruckus @ 82
I am old enough not to have Air National Guard connections or ‘other priorities’ so I didn’t pay attention and ended up in Vietnam unlike W, Dick and the rest of the sorry-ass Dick Nixon crew refugees like Rumsfeld and Hank Paulson.
Nothing is as bad as having had to put up watching those chickenhawks foul up they way they did with no consequence whatsoever. Although Obama and his DOJ letting each and every one of them skate on torture, lying us into two useless invasions, collapsing the economy and all of the rest of the bad sh!t they did and did not do is a close second. Why Obama wants to embolden his domestic enemies still remains unclear to me.
Ruckus
@Patriot 3:
No connections here either. Didn’t get sent in country, and I agree 100% with you.
I do think that almost no politician is going to castrate his immediate predecessor less he is somehow tarred, for his past or future. Don’t think it’s right but I think it takes a term or two for the fallout to land. If w and super dick go down, how much of the rest of the executive and legislative branches will go with them? How deep is the shitpile? I think it might be deeper than we think. And as bad as this is we still have a country to somehow run.