A barrier was broken in golf; can basketball be far behind?
For the first time in his presidency, Barack Obama included a woman in his golfing foursome Sunday, perhaps quelling some of the concern about his all-male basketball games at the White House.
Melody C. Barnes teed it up with Obama and two other players on the course at Fort Belvoir army base in Virginia in what was Obama’s 24th golf outing since he began his presidency.
Melody C. Barnes
Barnes is Obama’s domestic policy adviser. Previously, she served as legal counsel to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
It’s unclear whether her golfing experience matches her political experience, as scoring details from the round were not released.
Lynn Sweet, the Chicago Sun-Times Washington columnist who served as Sunday’s pool reporter at the course for the print medium, did report that the weather was perfect for golf.
Eric E. Whitaker and Marvin Nicholson filled out the Obama/Barnes foursome, Sweet reported.
Whitaker, a physician, is an Obama friend and the vice president of the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Nicholson is the White House trip director and a former aide to Sen. John Kerry. He’s also a former caddy at the Augusta National Golf Course in Georgia.
Sunday’s outing came after some media questioning about the all-male composition of an Oct. 8 basketball game on the White House court.
The players, all Democrats, included Arne Duncan, the secretary of education who played basketball for Harvard University, and Timothy Geithner, the secretary of the treasury and an alleged “basketball junkie.”
Also on the court were several members of Congress, including Heath Shuler of North Carolina, a former quarterback in the National Football League.
In an interview aired on Oct. 21, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie suggested to Obama that people might look at the game and say, “Gosh, there’s the old boys club again.”
Obama called that implication “bunk.”
“You know, basically, the House of Representatives, they have a regular basketball game,” Obama said. “And they had wanted to play here at the White House court. And we invited them. You know, I don’t think it sends any kind of message or signal whatsoever.”
Obama’s administration does have some women who might have joined the game.
Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, played varsity basketball for Trinity College in Washington.
Susan Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, was the point guard for her high school team at National Cathedral School in Washington.
Samantha Power, senior director for multilateral affairs at the National Security Council, was on her high school basketball team and has been known to shoot hoops with George Clooney.
Of course, if the president had wanted to reach beyond party and beyond Washington, he could have asked former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to play.
Nicknamed “The Barracuda,” Palin was a point guard for the team at Wasilla High School that won the Alaska state championship in 1982.
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1 Comments
#1. spongekill 10.28.2009
this is non-news
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