Dignity Takes A Holiday

So the New York Post has pictures of Barack Obama shirtless on the beach.

While this is better than the New York Post having pictures of Dick Cheney shirtless on the beach (and I can make fat guy jokes, being of teh fat guy variety myself) one has to wonder, where has the dignity gone? Not that Barack Obama going shirtless is a terrible thing. He's entitled. He's on vacation. He's on the beach. The beach implies, for men at least, that shirtlessness is acceptable. But do we need pictures of the Shirtless One to ogle? Does the Obama-as-God-and-Savior camp need more evidence that their chosen one is not only the soon-to-be leader of the free world, but also close to the Greek ideal of manhood and godliness? I suppose they do.

I feel badly for the Obamas. They have no private life for the next four years.

The Post reporter quotes a Manhattan fitness expert, saying Obama must be eating right. The Post reporter quotes famously-ripped California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger backpedaling from his calling Obama a girly-man loser. And I have to wonder, with the financial crisis that California is in, with the financial crisis that the nation is in, do we need reporters bothering people with such stupid questions? What's nest: Mr. Obama, is it boxers or briefs? What's worse than the question being asked (as Berkeley Breathed said when the question was asked of Bill Clinton) is that it's likely to be answered.

Bye-bye, dignity.