The Obama's Date Night - Good for Them I Say!

Politically speaking, I've always been a Democrat. There have been Democrats I've liked a great deal and Democrats I just liked better than the other guy - think Dukakis or McGovern. President Obama fell into that last category for me. I was very critical of him during the primary season. Somehow though, Republicans always manage to get my dander up and I start feeling really good about the guy who previously I "just liked." That's what happened tonight and for the oddest of reasons. The President had the gaul to take his wife on a date!

"I am taking my wife to New York City because I promised her during the campaign that I would take her to a Broadway show after it was all finished," the president said in a statement one of his aides read to the press.

I like that my president and his wife have what appears to be a good marriage. They hold hands, hug, and smile at each other a lot. They go on dates, almost like that sickeningly romantic couple we all seem to know. It's a nice thing particularly compared to the Nixons who barely spoke and the Clintons who had all those, ahem, marital difficulties. Some members of the National Republican Party took issue with tonight's date. Apparently because they thought that instead of going to dinner and a Broadway Show the President of the United States should have taken his wife out for pizza and a movie.

According to an Associated Press article written by Ann Sanner: "After dining a little more than two hours at Blue Hill, a West Village restaurant touted by New York magazine as a "seminal Greenmarket haven" that features food grown by chef and owner Dan Barber on his upstate farm, the president and first lady headed to the Belasco Theater to make curtain call for "Joe Turner's Come and Gone."

The RNC jumped on this Saturday night date like flies on you know what. Stooping to their usual low whenever we have a popular Democratic President, they issued a press release that criticized Obama's choice of entertainment during these troubling financial times and for being insensitive to the plight of the average American, forgetting that Joe Next -Door doesn't pull in 400 grand a year. Joe doesn't live and work in a public house and likely doesn't work more than 40-50 hours a week if he's employed at all. How they wonder can the President say he understands what people are going through and then fly up to New York for a show. They even dragged the General Motors saga into it. Give me a break! Do they hear themselves? Can they say, Reagan china? Yes they took a small jet and the taxpayers probably paid for that; but the taxpayer pays for all of the First Family's travel and frankly I'm miffed that he didn't take Air Force One with all the security,safety and work features the leader of the free world warrants.

Next thing you know they will be calling for the President to drive himself and his family around Washington, D.C. just like Joe Next-Door does when he isn't griping about the President's lifestyle with his poker pals.

In an AOL Poll 67% of those polled (roughly 170,000) approved of the date; 37% gave it a thumbs down. In another poll on AOL, 52% said they had been to a Broadway show; 48% hadn't. I would have liked to have asked if it would have been preferable for the President to invite the entire cast of the play to the White House to perform instead. That would have cost more I would think. Besides, they sure helped the economy at that West Village restaurant. My point is what is the big deal?

Really America, is this all the Republicans can come up with to cause a stir? One wonders why they have so much time on their hands they can issue such drivvel. Does the RNC think this will turn Obama's fans away from his ideology and polices? All they managed to do to me was make me like the guy more.