05:10 pm
Someone Didn’t Get the Message, Mr. President
President Bush, I thought you decider-ed this already. Looks like someone on your team didn’t get the message. From an interview conducted by Verne Lundquist of CBS:
QUESTION: Madame Secretary, your love of sports has been very well-documented…. Where does golf fit into the pantheon?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, golf is a new passion. I started golfing about – well, it’ll be three years in August that I’ve been golfing. And I have to say nothing’s captured my imagination like this. I was a competitive figure skater as a kid, and then a tennis player for many years. But golf is now starting to take that space that tennis once had.
QUESTION: Now there’s a small rumor that you were able to play a little bit yesterday?
SECRETARY RICE: I played a little bit yesterday, got out for a little while yesterday morning. I had my family in town, my cousin and her husband and a couple of friends for the Fourth. And so we went out and hit a few….
QUESTION: …[W]hat are your strengths and what are your weaknesses?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, I’ve always been good off the tee. From the very first time I played golf, I loved the driver. And my struggle – and I love putting, love putting. So my struggle is everything in between and — (laughter) – I’m trying to get better at the short game. That’s really my summer goal, is to get just a little bit better at chipping so that I can have a little shorter putt.
QUESTION: Do you want to share with us your handicap, or just kind of let it go?
SECRETARY RICE: Well, I finally established my handicap.
QUESTION: Great.
SECRETARY RICE: Now remember, it’s only been three years. I travel all the time. I don’t get to play very much. But it’s about – I’m told it’s about 21, and then at my home club, it’s a little higher because my home club is a very up-and-down club, so –
QUESTION: That’s very admirable, by the way. It really seems relevant that on this particular weekend, which is so meaningful to our country, that we have this tournament here and honoring four different branches of the military. Today, it’s the Marines.
SECRETARY RICE: Yes, absolutely.
So two years to the month after Bush gave up the game supposedly because he didn’t “want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf,” his chief peacemaker decided to pick up a pair of clubs instead of, oh, I don’t know, TRYING TO FIND AN END TO THE WAR IN IRAQ. Good thing she’ll has so much spare time this summer to work on her short game.
And while we’re at it, what the hell is going on with the non sequitur in the final paragraph? Lundquist goes from Condi’s handicap (isn’t it Bush? ba-da-bing! I’ll be here all week — please tip your waitress), to the 4th of July, to the troops in a single breath. The complete absence of sequential reasoning is making me dizzy.
Me, I gave up golf in 1979 to protest the Iran hostage crisis. And Ted Koppel’s hair. And the homecoming queen’s refusal to go out with me. And the break-up of the Sex Pistols two years earlier. And disco. And well, because I didn’t like it.
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