Is playing basketball an appropriate pastime for the U.S. president?
“President” Obama, hit in the mouth by the elbow of an official of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute during a holiday basketball game with friends and family, needed 12 stitches in his lip.
How stupid, how immature, how completely unfitting the dignity of the office, for the president of the United States to be playing such a rough and tumble game, as though he were a kid hanging out in the ‘hood.
I don’t want to overdo any generalizations, since blacks perform beautiful music and whites engage in unruly behaviors. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of the two stories today is striking and impossible to ignore. When white people gather together during the holiday season, they sing Handel’s Messiah. When black and Hispanic people get together during the holiday season, they play basketball and smash the president of the United States in the lip. They also unleash mayhem in shopping malls across the country. See SBPDL’s survey of Black Friday incidents.
Why am I making these racial comparisons, which many will see as invidious? What is my point? My point is that whites and blacks, notwithstanding many individual exceptions, are overall on completely different levels of civilization. For whites to treat black behaviors and black standards as equal to their own, is to drag our civilization down to the black level. Such pursuit of equality is not, contrary to what our liberal society teaches us, moral, but deeply immoral. What, then, is the moral opposite of that profound immorality? It is for whites to love and value the highest standards of their civilization, and to uphold them against all the forces, including the forces of racial egalitarianism and racial vengeance, that are seeking to degrade and destroy them.
The AP reports:
WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama needed 12 stitches in his upper lip after taking an errant elbow during a pickup basketball game Friday morning with family and friends visiting for the Thanksgiving holiday, the White House said.
First word of the injury came in a statement from press secretary Robert Gibbs nearly three hours after the incident.
The White House did not initially name the person who caused the injury, but identified him later Friday as Rey Decerega, director of programs for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute.
Obama received the stitches under local anesthesia in the doctor’s office on the ground floor of the White House after returning home. Doctors used a smaller filament than typically used, which increases the number of stitches but makes a tighter stitch and leaves a smaller scar.
The president had gone to nearby Fort McNair to indulge in a game of basketball, one of his favorite athletic pursuits. It was a five-on-five contest involving family and friends. Among the players were Obama’s nephew, Avery Robinson, Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Reggie Love, Obama’s personal assistant, who played at Duke University.
The White House said the injury happened during their fifth and final game when Decerega turned to take a shot and hit Obama, who was playing defense, in the mouth with his elbow.
Obama emerged from the building after about 90 minutes of play, wearing a short-sleeve T-shirt and gym pants, and was seen dabbing at his mouth with what appeared to be a wad of gauze. A few hours later, reporters who had gathered on the White House driveway for the arrival of the Christmas tree saw the president in an upstairs window, pressing an ice pack against his mouth before he stood and walked away.
“After being inadvertently hit with an opposing player’s elbow in the lip while playing basketball with friends and family, the president received 12 stitches today administered by the White House Medical Unit,” Gibbs said.
Decerega issued a statement through the White House late Friday. He did not immediately respond to an e-mail request from The Associated Press for independent comment.
“I learned today the president is both a tough competitor and a good sport,” the statement said. “I enjoyed playing basketball with him this morning. I’m sure he’ll be back out on the court again soon.”
Obama’s motorcade obeyed all traffic stops, the custom for nonofficial trips, during the return to the White House….
Obama had no public events scheduled during the long holiday weekend.
His stitched lip, however, could make for some interesting small talk on Tuesday, when Obama is to meet with the congressional leadership. The session originally was announced for Nov. 18, but was delayed after Republicans, who will control the House and increase their numbers in the Senate come January, said they couldn’t accommodate the president.
Medical help is always nearby for U.S. presidents. A doctor or nurse is stationed at the White House around the clock and accompanies the president in his motorcade and aboard Air Force One….
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 26, 2010 11:02 PM | Send