Will Secret Obama Workout Tape Lead to Impeachment? Or Just More Manly Drone Attacks?
I first saw this at Hot Air, where Allahpundit writes:
As a confirmed beta male myself, I'm no position to judge — although the eight thousand "Do you even lift, bro?" jokes on Twitter today did make me giggle. Remember back in the summer of 2008, at the zenith of Obamamania, when a German reporter claimed she watched him curl 32-kilogram, a.k.a. 70-pound, dumbbells? Either that was part of the Hopenchange hype or he's lost a lot of mass since, so much so that this practically serves as a metaphor for how far he's fallen. Don't be too judge-y, though: In his defense, he's going to be 53 this year and has a job that keeps him pretty busy, what with all the celebrity dinners and golfing and horrendously bad prisoner swaps and all.
I think Allahpundit's main point—that the mere existence of this sort of unflattering material is a marker of how much the bloom is off the rose with regard to Lord Obama—is a sound one.
I always find it disturbing when (mostly conservative) commenters fixate on perceived masculinity as a major topic of discussion (this is not what Allahpundit is doing here). As with the pajama boy reactions, there's a certain amount of uncomfortable…latency that bleeds through such commentary.
But there's a real question of whether Obama is sliding into Carteresque "Killer Rabbit" territory or H.W. Bush-level "wimp factor"or Mr. Creosote-style vomiting (god, wouldn't that be AWESOME?).
He's had a string of really awful micro-fuckups and mini-scandals of late and he's already a lame duck long before his last two years in office kick in. If Obama is feeling vulnerable to charges that he's not the he-man he once was, well, that might lead him to overreact in ways that could be really bad for the U.S. and whatever unfortunate countries he decides to bomb.
