O-Bama and A-Rod

Last night was the new El Predsidente's first press conference. He had to talk about his stimulus package. He had to address the faults of his plan, and the arguments of others that it is short sighted. He had to discuss the wars we are in and could be in. He had to field questions on how he has lost the whole "we're not red states, we're not blue states, we're the United States of America" rallying cry just short of a month in office. And then...well then he had to answer about good old A-Rod.

Yep, amidst talk of national crisis a journalist asked the president what he thought about the recent reveal that the high priced Yankees third baseman had taken performance enhancing drugs.

He answered...and he said what you would say about such a thing, but lets put this in perspective.

Picture it (Sophia on the Golden Girls style): You are at work in the middle of an insanely complex task. You are in charge (please note: if you are not in charge at your job, pretend for now you are in charge) and as you go over questions on your project someone comes in and says, "Hey, did you see the piss poor job they did plowing out there!"

Now, perhaps Obama planted this reporter like a woman schedules a friend to call her in the middle of a blind date. "Listen, if I start getting questions about how I only turned over three republican votes on my stimulus package its time to launch Project Q-Rod." Maybe he did, I don't know.

What I do know is that Alex Rodriguez simply does not matter. Not when we are at war, not when people are losing their jobs, and not when we are in the midst of a historic recession.

Honestly, what could he have said there short of...it's bad. It was a lay-up, a meatball, a drop of rain into his outstretch arms (to use three superb sports metaphors). And it had no place in this press conference.

If I were Obama, and I fielded that question I would have said, "I don't think about Alex Rodriguez. I'm too busy trying to balance the economy, get us out of a war safely while maintaining relative peace in the area, introduce new energy policies so we have a world to take steroids in and, well, Valentine's Day is coming up and I am plum out of ideas on what I should give Michelle."

Then you flash one of those loony Dubbya grins he was infamous for, call immediately on someone else after giving them an odd nickname (i.e. Stilts) and go about your day.