By The Way, You're On Lipitor And Like White Collar Crime

Don't you love being painted with a broad brush? I know I do hate it. This morning, I logged into the that font of political wisdom known as "Huffington Post" to read something Bill Maher, the HBO host, had to say about golf:

"Golf, if you're not familiar, is a pastime where you basically walk outdoors with a bag, muttering and cursing. It's like being homeless in loud pants. Anyway, Time magazine is reporting that since he became president, Barack Obama has taken up golf with a passion, playing almost every weekend for the past few months -- and I feel betrayed. He campaigned as a basketball player. It said to us, "I'm urban and athletic and hip and a team player." Golf says, "I like Lipitor and white collar crime." And it's not just golf -- he's been purposefully eating a lot of hamburgers in public lately, to prove he loves meat."

So, because I love golf, I take Lipitor and white collar crime, huh?

Well, thankfully, I am not on Lipitor, not yet anyway, and in my position, "white collar crime" is limited to not much more than stealing a pen from the company supplies.

But I play golf. It hardly jibes with Maher's caricature.

Whether you like or dislike Barack Obama or the job he is doing, you have to agree that what he does in the paucity of spare time he is afforded away from the Oval Office should be spent the way that he likes, so long as the activity is legal and safe. If it is on a golf course, all the better. And guys like Bill Maher should mind their own business and quit pretending that they are the ones who decide these things not only for Barack Obama but any president. Or for the rest of us, for that matter. The only thing Maher proves in his opinion hit-piece is that it's true that there are two things everyone has, and one of them is an opinion. And like the other thing, Maher's opinion stinks to high heaven.

Frankly, I like the fact that Obama enjoys golf. I completely understand how it can help clear the head, and provide a mental refreshment for anyone. I like that he plays a game of honor and his own referee. And I like that apparently he doesn't cheat at golf the way that Bill Clinton does, something that revealed more character to me than his box of cigars that he kept in the Oval Office ever did. So I added this comment to Maher's screed, something I expect will be fully eviscerated by the typing heads over there:

"Generalize much, Bill?

"Your ad hominem attack on golf is nearly as silly as you telling President Obama what he should do in his rare moments of spare time. You voted for him to do a job, not to live the way *you* think he should and it is utterly ridiculous for you to presume yourself to do so.

"All golfers "like Lipitor and white collar crime?" That's as dumb and wrong-headed as the racist mutterings still heard in some dark corners of the south. Golf is a game well over five hundred years old, has been played by paupers and kings, and still is. I would bet that the majority of those who play neither take Lipitor or partake in white collar crime.

"In case you missed it, Barack Obama played golf before he ran for president, he played before he was sworn in and he plays golf now. So what? If it gives the man a chance to get away from people like you, you know, the ones who tell him how he should act based only on YOUR idea of how a president should act, all the better.

"Me, I will happily take an Obama who heeds his own counsel and doesn't let his presidency or his personal time be conducted by talking television heads who only add more noise than signal to the discussion of our time."

Let 'em have at it. Tear me a new one. It will only make me laugh.

I do hope that golf blogger Stephanie Wie, who also pens columns for the Huffington Post, will write one of her patented concise, clear and well-thought-out responses to Maher. That will make me laugh even more.