Put Vladimir on hold, ISIS in Tunisia now(?), yawn, and send Bibi a dead fish in a box - Obama's got to address an annual national issue that can not wait! No, not the Federal Budget, not even the Easter Egg Roll (do they still call it that?) - None of that crap matters - we're talking the March Madness Brackets fool and that's all we're talking.
The Hill clues us in on what's happening - 0 picks UK to win - and delves into the Presidents historic performance as far as Baracketology is concerned. Last year the Presidents picks secured a "rank of 2,987,736 of all brackets submitted to ESPN" - not bad for a nation of 300M+. Yes, he hasn't picked the champ since his first year in office, but you could say that is consistent with everything else he's flubbed, and this year he's got a good chance of improving his average by getting on the Kentucky bandwagon (maybe he's just trying to show bi-partisanship with Mitch and Rand).
I'm picking West Virginia to upset UK in their Sweet 16 match-up in what will go down as one of the greatest events in Mountaineer history but Obama does tend to prognosticate winners from Blue or Swing States so that's an ideological handicap born of magical thinking - not that Kentucky is much of a Swing State anymore having gone from Blue 2008 to Purple 2012 to pretty solid Red 2014 but the Wildcats team colors are Blue so there's that.
Rolling Stone Magazine is less charitable in their in-depth analysis claiming that Obama is "surprisingly bad" in his picks - I guess it's surprising for some inexplicable, unfathomable reason - I wouldn't want to guess what that reason is but RS does try to identify the "root cause" - 1. He loves No. 1 seeds, 2. His championship pick might as well be a kiss of death, 3. He hates Cinderellas, 4. He is good at picking first-round upsets, though, 5. He has no alma mater bias so he's got a lot riding on his picks and, as RS points out, "the president will have a chance to redeem himself this year." Thank God for that! But does he really hate Cinderella?
After all, he's something of a Cinderella story himself (and no, Cinderella is not a racially charged word, yet) as a Euro/American folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression. Follow the princess's picks yourself and see how he performs - will he attain redemption? He clearly spends A LOT of time thinking about this stuff but we won't know for certain until April 6th and the tension is killing me.
The Hill clues us in on what's happening - 0 picks UK to win - and delves into the Presidents historic performance as far as Baracketology is concerned. Last year the Presidents picks secured a "rank of 2,987,736 of all brackets submitted to ESPN" - not bad for a nation of 300M+. Yes, he hasn't picked the champ since his first year in office, but you could say that is consistent with everything else he's flubbed, and this year he's got a good chance of improving his average by getting on the Kentucky bandwagon (maybe he's just trying to show bi-partisanship with Mitch and Rand).
I'm picking West Virginia to upset UK in their Sweet 16 match-up in what will go down as one of the greatest events in Mountaineer history but Obama does tend to prognosticate winners from Blue or Swing States so that's an ideological handicap born of magical thinking - not that Kentucky is much of a Swing State anymore having gone from Blue 2008 to Purple 2012 to pretty solid Red 2014 but the Wildcats team colors are Blue so there's that.
Rolling Stone Magazine is less charitable in their in-depth analysis claiming that Obama is "surprisingly bad" in his picks - I guess it's surprising for some inexplicable, unfathomable reason - I wouldn't want to guess what that reason is but RS does try to identify the "root cause" - 1. He loves No. 1 seeds, 2. His championship pick might as well be a kiss of death, 3. He hates Cinderellas, 4. He is good at picking first-round upsets, though, 5. He has no alma mater bias so he's got a lot riding on his picks and, as RS points out, "the president will have a chance to redeem himself this year." Thank God for that! But does he really hate Cinderella?
After all, he's something of a Cinderella story himself (and no, Cinderella is not a racially charged word, yet) as a Euro/American folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression. Follow the princess's picks yourself and see how he performs - will he attain redemption? He clearly spends A LOT of time thinking about this stuff but we won't know for certain until April 6th and the tension is killing me.
If he won't accept his Cinderella story at least he's "humble" enough to consider himself to have been a 3rd of 4th seed in the 2008 presidential race - "scrappy" but still... a Louisville not a Kentucky.
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| President Barack Obama hard at work |
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