By Michael Luciano @ The Daily Banter
Uh oh. President Obama went golfing for a second time while on vacation since video surfaced on Tuesday of an American journalist being murdered in Syria. Naturally, conservatives (and some liberals) haven’t been this angry since they were that angry over Obama golfing the first time he did it.
If it seems like criticizing Obama for going golfing is something conservatives do a lot, that’s because it’s something conservatives do a lot. However, it’s not always clear when the President shouldn’t go golfing. So in the interest of saving Obama from further golf-related criticism, and from hitting the sand more than a beach volleyball, I’ve made the following list:
2009
April 26: Fox News astutely observes that the press isn’t being allowed to film Obama golfing during the swine flu scare, thereby suggesting he knows he shouldn’t be golfing.
Pro tip: No golfing during hyped-up viral outbreaks.
July 26: Obama plays golf for the tenth time in 10 weeks, earning him the nickname, “The First Duffer” among reporters too unimportant to get the nickname to stick.
Pro tip: No golfing 10 times in a 10 week span
2010
April 18: The Icelandic volcano eruption prevents Obama from traveling to Poland to attend the Polish President’s funeral, so, as the Washington Times notes, he plays golf instead.
Pro tip: No golfing during a foreign leader’s funeral after planning to attend, but not attending due to a huge continent-wide volcanic ash cloud.
June 20: Obama goes golfing while oil is still leaking into the Gulf of Mexico from BP’s exploded rig. RNC Chair Michael Steele demands Obama stop golfing until the leak stops, which apparently Obama could easily do by SCUBA diving down plugging it himself.
Pro tip: No golfing during oil spills.
2011
March 5: Obama goes golfing while the price of oil increases.
Pro tip: No golfing while the price of oil increases. To achieve this, carry a real-time, tick-by-tick oil chart out on the course and only golf when the price is decreasing. And by “oil,” I mean good old West Texas Intermediate crude; none of that sissy European Brent crude shit.
March 16: Obama goes golfing as the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan continues to leak radioactive material.
Pro tip: No golfing during nuclear plant meltdowns anywhere in the world.
May 1: Obama plays nine holes and finishes several hours before the start of the Navy SEAL mission that would kill Osama bin Laden. However, on November 7, several conservative media outlets, including Town Hall, Newsmax, and the ever-accurate InfoWars, will erroneously report that Obama was golfing a mere 20 minutes before the raid. Later, this accusation will morph into a less enraging claim that Obama was playing cards near, but not in the situation room before the raid.
Pro tip: No golfing during the 24 hours leading up to a major special ops raid just in case conservatives get confused. In fact, the night before, randomly hold a nationally televised presidential address declaring a one-day presidential golfing moratorium so everyone knows you definitely weren’t golfing.
May 30: Fox notes that Obama goes golfing on Memorial Day after participating in ceremonies earlier because he should’ve done sad things for the entire of the day.
Pro tip: No golfing on Memorial Day. It would’ve been more appropriate for Obama to do what Fox’s Bill O’Reilly did one Memorial Day: send a producer to interview scantily clad women at a beach.
June 25: House Majority Whip Frank Underwood Kevin McCarthy says Obama should stop golfing while debt ceiling negotiations are ongoing.
Pro tip: No golfing when Republicans are threatening to let the country default if they don’t get what they want.
August 23: Obama goes golfing on vacation at Martha’s Vineyard as a 5.8 earthquake hits Washington, D.C. Or he was biking. There seems to be some uncertainty.
Pro tip: Beat seismologists to the punch by gaining foreknowledge of earthquakes and do not golf during them.
November 15: Obama golfs with an old friend who was charged with soliciting a prostitute.
Pro tip: No golfing with people accused of soliciting prostitutes, unless it’s Republican David Vitter because bipartisanship.
December 7: Mitt Romney says, “It’s time to have a president whose idea of being ‘hands on’ doesn’t mean getting a better grip on the golf club.”
Pro tip: No golfing when your likely presidential opponent thinks you’re golfing too much because he’s definitely not saying it to score a soundbite.
2012
April 18: Mitt Romney tells Obama to stop golfing so much.
Pro tip: Ibid.
June 14: In an amazing arithmetical breakthrough, the Washington Times reports,
The next time President Obama hits the links, it will be his 100th round of golf since coming to the White House. That’s quite a milestone in just 3 1/2 years.As it takes him about six hours to drive to the greens and complete 18 holes, Mr. Obama has spent the equivalent of four months’ worth of work time golfing.
At six hours apiece, 100 rounds means a total of 600 hours spent playing golf. Divided by 24 hours, that’s 25 days-worth of golf. But the Times is talking about “work time” because that’s obviously a clearly defined unit of measurement. Also, the presidency is sort of just like a 9-5 job. Also, surely no one ever plays just nine holes of golf, which would halve the time it takes. So therefore, four months “work time.”
Pro tip: No golfing in such a way that leaves you vulnerable to conservatives’ impregnable Jedi math.
July 19: “Obama spends more time on golf than economy.”
Pro tip: No golfing when you’re not spending more time on the economy.
July 23: Obama plays golf “instead of visiting Israel.”
Pro tip: No golfing while you’re not visiting Israel.
2013
February 19: Obama goes golfing with Tiger Woods as negotiations in Congress are ongoing about how to stave off automatic budget cuts.
Pro tip: No golfing with Tiger Woods.
March 6: Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert introduces an amendment to prevent Obama from golfing after the White House briefly stops giving tours as budget negotiations continue.
Pro tip: No golfing when the White House isn’t giving tours. And no golfing when a very serious person like Gohmert says no golfing.
August 31: Obama goes golfing after announcing the U.S. should conduct military strikes against Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. In a double whammy for Republicans, Obama ends up not ordering the strikes.
Pro tip: No golfing after getting Republicans all hot and bothered with dirty-talk about airstrikes only to have it end up being one big tease.
2014
April 23: Obama goes golfing instead of attending his aunt’s funeral in South Boston.
Pro tip: No golfing during the funeral of relatives in South Boston you may not have seen in many years or ever. Or if you must, go to the funeral and then hit the TPC Boston in Norton.
August 7: No one criticizes Obama for golfing on this day, but incredibly, “The First Duffer” nickname reemerges five years later in a 2,700-word feature on Obama’s golf game in Politico. The strange conclusion is that Obama goes golfing to temporarily escape from his failed presidency.
Pro tip: This feature piece implies that Obama is increasingly retreating into golf to getaway from the stress that comes with having a failed presidency. Thus, Obama should’ve gone golfing a lot more during the earlier years of his presidency, so it would look like he’s doing less golfing and more presidenting than he was previously.
Like this guy, who quit golf altogether in 2003:
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