On Thursday night, Barack Obama made history by becoming the first sitting U.S. president to appear on a late night talk show.

After host Jay Leno made the Commander-in-Chief sit in the green room while he made fun of cat muzzles, Obama came out to talk about – what else – the economy, Tim Geithner, and AIG, before launching into an anecdote about how his daughters love Starburst candies.

Then, Jay Leno asked the President if he was getting rid of the famed White House bowling alley.  Nope, Obama said, bragging that he bowled a “129″.  Leno politely applauded – quasi-mockingly saying “That’s very good, Mr. President” – to which Obama, under the audience’s laughter and applause, said “it was like the Special Olympics or something.” (Click for video)

Oof.  The White House quickly went into damage control mode.  Not long after the broadcast, a White House spokesman issued a statement:

“The President made an offhand remark making fun of his own bowling that was in no way intended to disparage the Special Olympics,” Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton told reporters. “He thinks that the Special Olympics are a wonderful program that gives an opportunity to shine to people with disabilities from around the world.”

Ummm, right.  But while the Washington Post, the LA Times, the Associated Press and other major news organizations almost immediately picked up on the Special Olympics gaffe, the New York Times appears to bury the lede: an article by Helene Cooper, with a half-dozen presidential quotes from the show, makes no mention of it; an earlier blog post on “The Caucus” by Times reporter Edward Wyatt (screencap, right) contains more than a dozen quotes from Obama, but none of them on the Special Olympics.

(To be fair, there is a link to a transcript from the show after Wyatt’s first para – highlighted in red in the screencap – but don’t you think they’d pullquote that Special Olympics gaffe SOMEWHERE on their website?  At least?  JOURNALISM 101, DUDES!  And ha ha, it took a Times commenter to bring up the Special Olympics blooper in the first place, more than an hour after Wyatt’s post went up.)

Lesson learned: The Times is all too happy to play up Obama’s new vegetable garden, but will conveniently ignore it when our president channels Johnny Knoxville.

for breaking trend

with wait-a-whiling,

and causing misery to end.

Thank you, friend,

for doing what you must -

leave sadness, forsaken,

and loneliness, nonplussed.

I’ll see you soon,

by light of day,

by ray of moon,

I’ll come your way

and we’ll have words

to leave us smiling

and time to lend

to wait-a-whiling.

From angels, borrow

a quietude

until tomorrow.

Have dream that brings

a smile.  A dream of things

that take a while.

Let peace pervade, and storm

be stayed, as when a cloudless sky is made.

Good night, friend.  Good night.

Be clear of sorrows

for worth of many, many morrows

and wake to find a friend who’ll say

good day, my friend.

Good day.

For the mill, gristless.  No substance.  Gistless.

Forlorn’d.  Unadorned.  Dead, and not mourned.  Birthed, not born.

Unangelic; horned.  /  Crazy’d; crazed.  Confused and dazed.

Minotaur, mazed; Laz’rus, unraised.

Evening, spent.  Moonless and bent.

Flatlined, zeroed, in a descent.

Capital given; capital spent.

Wishing you’d gone.

wishing I’d went.

With apologies to Dr. Seuss, born on this day in 1904. (Photo via the NY Daily News)

In New York, it did not snow at all.

It did not.

NYC schools?  Not closed.

Our roads not gone to pot.

Not at all as supposed:

a foot fall of snow, rend’ring all plans a no.

It’s not so.  In New York,

there’s no snow.  (Shrugs.)

Also no hue and cry

asking wherefores, and whys

that a blanket of white

settled in, overnight.

Tell your colleagues and beaus -

(Through a loudhailer.) “In New York, there’s no snow!

Don’t wear boots, don’t you salt

instead enjoy cold malt, and eat some ice cream.

What March snow?  ‘Tis a dream!

Your brain letting off steam.

In New York, there’s not one inch of snow.  No no no.

Take off your winter coat and go swim in a moat!

Go fish from a boat!  On lover, go dote!

And you won’t need a Snuggie -

’tis your eyes, they’re just buggy!”  (Put away loudhailer.  It all seems so silly.

Too much willy-nilly.)

That’s not snow.  Not at all.

No sir, snow did not fall

in New York.  No sirree -

that is not snow you see

at your feet, up to knees.

Formed as snowballs – miss, PLEASE!

‘Tis not snow.  No no no.

Not a snowball you’ll throw

at my face, in attempt to erase

any addled-brained notion

that this part of the nation

got some white, flaky precipitation!

(Irate.) No no no,

there’s no wonderful,

white,

appallingly light

snow that cometh from sky -

(Not irate.) Would you look at that!  Why

it appears, in New York,

it did snow.

And the winter winds blow

in New York.  One more foot.

And a day off to boot.

(Excitedly.) Yes yes yes!  With snow

New York has indeed

been blessed!

And so off I will go

to traipse through, and fall

and capture it all.

In New York, it did snow.  (Smile, then

puzzlement.) How the heck did you know?

- Aaron Altman

"Wait - did I write 'fear itself' or 'one big fucking monster'?"

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt first took the office of President in 1932, the country was just coming off the pool party that was Herbert Hoover’s presidency, during which the Great Depression took hold and popular resort areas known as Hoovervilles began springing up across the landscape.

It was in this context that FDR gave his famous inaugural speech: at a time when the hopes and dreams of so many Americans had come crashing down, leaving them penniless and scraping by in a meager existence, Frankie Deli (that’s what his closest friends called him) needed to give the ultimate pep talk.  And it worked!  His most famous soundbite came in the fifth sentence of the first para:

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

Trust us, the rest was garbage.  Of course, we will be listening to President Obama’s speech with bated breath, awaiting his “nothing to fear but fear itself” moment.  Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau, who totally wrote the screenplay for Swingers, will surely have some zingers up his Hillary-cutout-cop-a-feel sleeves.  But what will it be?

Wordsmokers, here’s your chance to suggest A PIECE OF HISTORY.  You can follow Dismal’s literary lead or just make shit up out of thin air!  All entries will be emailed directly to the White House*, so get yours in before Obama’s address to Congress begins at 9pm EST.  I’ll start:

• “This is a stimul-us, not a stimul-them.  Amirite?”
• “Yes, future generations will bear the financial fallout of this bailout.  Our children, and our children’s children.  But look at it this way: China’s been using child labor for like centuries now!
• “Look, I’ve only been President for like two months, okay?  Have you seen Michelle’s new hairdo?”
• “Hey, how about that Roland Burris, huh?  What a dick!”
• “Ask not for a bank loan with no confirmed source of income and a ridiculously low starter rate that’ll balloon to an APR of 23.75% two years later: ask what you can do for a free toaster instead.”
• “George W. Bush, you fucked this country.  Well, I’m here to say, I’m gonna UN-fuck you!”
• “Did someone just fart?  I thought I heard a fart.”
• “Rick Santelli.  Me.  Pay-per-view cage match live from Wrigley Field.  Who’s in?”
• “Would you rather comment on Gawker, or WRITE for Wordsmoker?  It’s a metaphor, people!”
• “THAT’S the BAILOUT?  LOOK at the SIZE of that thing!!!”
• “ZOMG WTF KTHXBAI!”

Now it’s your turn – leave your suggestions in the comments!

*As in the abandoned white colonial with the detached garage at the corner of Mulberry Street and 5th Place in Waukegan Falls, IA.

The penny isn’t dead.  Long live the penny.

Of course, given the state of the economy, it makes perfect sense to let the one-cent coin stick around: to paraphrase the old adage, every one counts!  And now, Congress gives us 78,900,000,000,000 more reasons to keep the change, wheeee let’s break our piggy banks to help pay for what New York senator Chuck Schumer schmuckily calls the “porky” stimulus!  At least we don’t have to keep looking at the same old patinated (patinized? Whatever – ed.) penny from 1971 anymore:

The first of four new pennies chronicling Abraham Lincoln’s rise from a small Kentucky cabin will be put into circulation Thursday to honor the 16th president’s 200th birthday.

The coin’s front, or obverse, is unchanged, with a likeness of the President.

But the reverse of the coin released Thursday depicts a log cabin, representing the one-room house where Lincoln was born near Hodgenville, Ky.

Good news for numismatics and Lincoln-o-philes, no doubt!  But how soon until we hear of people scrounging through those “Give-A-Penny-Take-A-Penny” trays at 7-11 counters everywhere, “looking for the one where Abe’s sittin’ on that log, yo?  That’s like a collector’s item or somethin’!”  Answer: not soon enough.  Heaven knows I still need Alaska and Hawaii for my state quarters collection.

Oh – did I just write that aloud?

(Four New Pennies Chronicle Lincoln’s Rise From Log Cabin – AP via USA Today)

Poor Michael Phelps, the gazillionaire professional swimmer who got busted smoking pot.