The Days Are Just Packed

I used to wonder about how The President of the United States could find time to do things like pardon Thanksgiving turkeys and show up to graduations and commencements. The personal appearance type of thing. Of course, this sends my mind tumbling back to the morning of September, 11 2001 when then President and personal friend of Ellen DeGeneres George W was caught reading The Pet Goat while America was under attack. Oops. There was a sharp drop-off in classroom visits for Mister Bush after that episode.
These days it seems that the current "president" has little else to do but photo ops and Twitter Time. While blathering on social media policy decisions are made in those pockets of time when his thumbs are not otherwise occupied. Abandoning the Kurds? That choice was made between checking out the new White House tennis pavilion and looking up the proper spelling of "hamberders." This gave him just enough time to toss off a pithy remark about how "they didn't help us with Normandy." A reference the "president" cribbed from right wing columnist Kurt Schlichter. Leaving many of us to scratch our heads and wonder about this association, but undermining the reality of thousands of Kurds being slaughtered by invading Turkish forces.
Then there's the NBA. As that sports league attempts to deal with the reality of human rights abuses by China, and how to business with a repressive dictatorship, the "president" chose to hop in on the issue. Not by helping to illuminate the democracy protests in Hong Kong or to delineate his administration's position, but by pointing fingers and calling names. Probably still stinging from being turned down by his offer or hamberders to the two time NBA champion Golden State Warrirors, the "president" referred to head coach Steve Kerr as "a little boy" and derided his choice not to speak directly about a topic he admitted he was still trying to understand. Imagine: becoming more informed about an issue before tapping away on your phone something about which you know little or nothing.  “It's better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt.” Mark Twain probably didn't fully anticipate social media at the time, but he was onto something. Or, to quote another author of something more than tweets, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."