Baracketology

Recently, you may have heard, there has been a little something going on called the NCAA basketball tournament. Have you heard of it? Did you fill out a bracket? Millions of people do, and you probably have at one point or another in your life. Personally, I never have, not because I have a problem with it, but because my OCD cannot handle thinking about 64, no, 65 teams, and all of the different permutations that brackets would require.

Our president, Barack H. Obama, does not have such a problem, and his filling out of brackets has become a bit of an event through his presidency. In case you aren’t familiar with our president, he is an American citizen, and a huge basketball fan. He even got a bona fide 12-stitch basketball injury last November, which some might have thought gave him some street cred, but I thought just looked adorable!

In any event, all of the news outlets, printed and broadcast, devoted a portion of their space to this event. Who the President picked is insignificant (but on a side note, did you know that Kansas is the greatest producer of meth in the United States, while Ohio is the birthplace of astronauts, presidents and maybe George Clooney? It’s true!) but to some, the fact that he dared to take ten minutes to fill out his brackets, while there were significant world events occurring, was the most unconscionable act that a human could have ever committed. Some political pundits devoted significant portions of their shows to discussing this. Glenn Beck, in fact, wondered if President Obama’s filling out of the NCAA brackets was a sign that he had been hit by a “stupid stick.”

A stupid stick? This reminds me of the headline from the Huffington Post dated December 29, 2008, “Bush Enjoys Vacation as Middle East Crisis Escalates” or “Just Call it Bush’s Vacation from Hell” from USA Today right after Hurricane Katrina. The fact is, that no matter what a president does, there are going to be bozos from the left and the right, jumping all over the fact that this person dared to take even a moment out of his job, which we all have to admit, has got to be pretty stressful, to spend time with his family, his wife, or to fill out something as mindless and meaningless as an NCAA bracket.

As of this writing, there were 265 comments following an online story about President Obama picking the NCAA final teams. Here is one:

“Where is this guy's head at.. People are dying in Lybia. Rebels had been heard saying where is Obama and he is working on his golf game and brackets. Somebody should tell him that the economy is in shambles and that the Japanese Crisis will create a economic problem of Tsumani proportions for us. Maybe the good President will hire some advisors who take these issues seriously. What a sad excuse for a President..”

I am going to tell you right now that I did not doctor that comment at all, including the punctuation, and this makes me sad for America. The fact that someone could legitimately think that the President of the United States of America does nothing but work on his golf game and brackets, is not only exceptionally unintelligent, but also ridiculous. The President of the United States, whether he is Barack Obama, George Bush, or Ronald Reagan, is the leader of the free world. There is no getting around that. His job is hard. My God, if you want to criticize a president, criticize something real.

There is too much time being spent right now, reading into the actions of politicians, and passing uninformed, uncritical, and damaging speculation about them. As citizens, and as consumers of media, and so often as participants in media, it is our responsibility to really question the statements that are being made. Whether the comment is about Barack Obama wasting all of his time obsessing about basketball, or about Sarah Palin being the reason why Gabrielle Giffords was shot, this kind of discourse does nothing to improve our nation, or society, or our collective good.

So, in the end, I guess this is all I have to say: God bless you, President Obama, and grant you, and all who come after you, moments of respite, so that you can then return to guiding us, and leading the world. Also: Go Bucks.