For our former congressman, Joe Scarborough and his TV co-host Willie Geist, Obama’s bowling is, however, a big issue. Consider the following comments from today’s “Morning Joe” on MSNBC:

“If you get 200, you’re a good bowler … you get 150, you’re a man—or a good woman.”

Gueist: “out of my president, I want a 150, at least.” (Because … why?)

Scarborough, following a video clip of Obama bowling: “Oh, that’s so dainty. Ugh … That is such a dainty release.”

Geist: “Oh, it’s like a children’s birthday party.”

I know, I know, it’s all good humor, a joke, and we’re not supposed to think they’re actually saying anything about Obama’s fitness for the Oval Office.

But jokes about the Democrat male candidates being effeminate, dainty, pretty boys go back at least to the 2000 election, in contrast to virile, manly Republicans, who rarely get mocked in the same way. Just look how much gush we’ve had from the right wing over Bush—a guy who was grounded from flying after two years for blowing off his flight exam—as a rugged, he-man “stud-muffin” jet-fighter pilot and a simple, plainspoken Texas man-of-the-soil farmer (hey, he clears brush! What does a rich oil family, bags of money and a Yale degree matter when we can see him clearing brush, right there in photos!).

To put it another way, I doubt Scarborough’s going to make fun of McCain’s bowling any time soon.

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