Awe.... They're Just Like Us....

Apparently, BO and Biden made a burger run to Arlington yesterday, and the White House Press Corps did their best US Weekly impression - big surprise. Matt Welch captures my thoughts quite well:

These sorts of ultra-lame, super-calculated P.R. stunts really chap my hide. They're simply the obverse of official stories that Kim Jong-il doesn't ever go to the bathroom or that Mussolini could beat even Italian champs at tennis, clearly phony embellishments to alternately make leaders either superhuman or super-normal.

We are supposed to live in a republic (small R!) and one of the grand traditions of republics is that the de-spectacularize the public sphere, especially when it comes to representing political figures. Kings and monarchs rubbed their divine status in the face of the common man through gigantic and expensive pageants. Now wealthy and uber-powerful pols pretend to be sans-culottes, which may be even more insulting. Like Lady Obama wearing $540 sneakers to a food bank handout (or Nancy Reagan using dinner china made from the bones of Warner Bros. backlot extras) this sort of phony-baloney common-manism should get nothing but scorn.

Whole Reason post here.