Obama's La Dolce Vita

I have a husband who likes to golf. Oh, not as much as, say, Tiger Woods and Barack Obama do, but enough that he has had occasion to spend hours and hours on the golf course in all sorts of weather. One time, it was so hot and the UV was so high that he got fried and sick. That time, I recall, I had an epiphany which I imparted to him and will now share with you. It is this: Golf makes you stupid. And the more golf you play, the stupider you get.

You might bear that in mind as you read Mark Steyn's latest column about the golfiingest president ever, a man who, no matter what calamity has struck or is on the cusp of striking, always has hours of time to piss away on the links.

The Italians have a phrase for this sort of activity/mindset: il dolce far niente--the deliciousness of doing sweet eff all.

Now, as a modus operandi, il dolce far niente works fine if it's 1960 and you're in a Frederico Fellini film. But if you're commander-in-chief of the free world (the job description prior to Obama's presidency; it has since been downgraded to something along of the lines of "commander-of-just-another-non-exceptional-country-in-the-UN")...not so much.

Here's Steyn on the "golf" (which, spelled backward, is "flog"; make of that what you will):

In 2008, Obama offered Hope and Change. This time round he's offering the Hope of No Change. Life goes on. When your president's middle name is Hussein, trust me, that's all the change you guys need. Harry Reid says he doesn't even want to talk about the possibility of opening discussions to consider raising the possibility of contemplating the thought of the merest smidgeonette of changes to Social Security for another 20 years. Sen. Reid, 71, told MSNBC this week, "Two decades from now, I'm willing to take a look at it." Big of you. No-Change You Can Believe In! The Audacity of Torpor.

There may be more takers for this than my friends on the right would wish. On Libya, the Audacity of Golf seems to have done the trick: Nobody's in the mood for a no-fly zone in another thankless distant hellhole just as Iraq and Hoogivsastan have dropped off the news. And yeah, gas seems to be going up, and, when 40 percent of Americans work in minimal-skill service jobs, it makes a difference to the economic viability of those jobs whether you're driving there at a dollar-eighty per gallon or four bucks. "We have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe," Steven Chu, now Obama's Energy Secretary, said in 2008. We're getting there. It's just shy of 10 bucks per in Britain, but there's no reason a fuel policy for small, densely populated nations can't work for Wyoming, because we're investing in all those high-speed rail links. So you'll be able to commute from your home in Rattlesnake, Nev., to your job in North Rattlesnake, Nev., via the Joseph Robinette Biden Delaware, Lackawanna, Atchison, Topeka, Santa Fe & Canadian Pacific High-Speed Interchange Facility & Federal Stimulus Mausoleum in Wilmington...

I will now do my utmost to stifle the urge to parodize "The Canadian Railroad Trilogy" and "On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe."

Update: Sorry, the urge was too powerful:

Do you see that slim dude on the course?
You know he's the commander of the strongest force?
Even though it doesn't look that way
On the B. Hussein Obam' extended holiday.
See him blowin' smoke near' everywhere.
A-bowin' down to oily Saudi billionaires.
Golfing is the game he loves to play
On the B. Hussein Obam' extended holiday.
There he goes!
Ooh, ooh, ooh,
Hey, Joe, you'd better man the phone.
Ooh, ooh, ooh.
He's at the 14th hole and must be left alone.
So if A-jad, say, blows up the Jews
You'll have to hold off giving him
The awful news.
"My Pet Goat"? Ha, that is so passé.
It's the B. Hussein Obam' extended holiday.