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AP rolls a gutter ball

December 30, 2008 11:26 am ET by Jamison Foser

The Associated Press reports:

President-elect Barack Obama thought he'd put the bowling jokes behind him.

Not likely.

On the golf course Monday, a woman waiting at the 18th green reminded Obama of his disastrous bowling during the presidential campaign. ...

"That was pretty good, right?" Obama said to cheers as he finished a round of golf near his $9 million rented vacation home near Honolulu.

The woman sitting on a nearby wall shouted, "Better than your bowling."

...

The woman's quip referred to Obama's embarrassing bowling outing in Pennsylvania, when he knocked down only 37 pins — with the assist during two frames from an 8-year-old. It was an effort to connect with working-class voters, yet he lost Pennsylvania's primary election to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Disastrous"?  Really?  It was a trip to a bowling alley, not a failed amphibious invasion of Cuba.  "Disastrous" seems a bit overheated.

And notwithstanding the AP's certainty that Obama's "disastrous" bowling experience destroyed his ability to "connect with working-class voters," the man did, um, win the presidency.  Seems like he must have connected with at least a handful of working-class voters along the way.  Even some Pennsylvanians, who managed to look past Obama's bowling ability and give him a comfortable general-election win.

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    • Author by MickD (December 30, 2008 12:00 pm ET)
         
      Desperate.
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    • Author by steeve (December 30, 2008 6:23 pm ET)
         
      "Disastrous seems a bit overheated."

      What's up with MMFA's habit of understating? The media doesn't deserve it. How about "Disastrous is insane language for a professional to use about a bowling game, and only a complete dumbass would write like that."

      Note: to be a disaster, an event should have at least one negative consequence.

      And how about that straight-up claim that the bowling had the slightest thing to do with the Pennsylvania primary outcome?
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    • Author by yancy derringer (December 31, 2008 3:55 am ET)
         

       Steeve:  Note: to be a disaster, an event should have at least one negative consequence.

      Never saw this youtube clip during the yammering about Obama's bowling. Does falling on your face qualify as a negative consequence?

      Report Abuse
    • Author by ryno6920 (December 31, 2008 10:59 am ET)
         
      Face it, bowling, golf, US Senator, State Sentor, community organizer, President of the Harvard Law Review, wherever he has been and what ever Obama has done, it hasn't been much.
      Report Abuse
    • Author by eweston8542983 (December 31, 2008 12:17 pm ET)
         

      Did anyone ever rate shrub's brush clearing over the last eight years?

      Or his running or biking form? His regurgitation was rated pretty good as I recall.

      Report Abuse
    • Author by shaggles (December 31, 2008 5:12 pm ET)
         
      Thanks for highlighting this and pointing out that Obama won PA.  From the tone of the article you'd think he'd lost.  Funny how the press never talks about McCain's (or any other Republicans) inability to connect with voters.
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