Obama: Please Keep Your Shirt On

I don't know what Obama wants to be.

Does he want to be a frivolous, pampered Hollywood-type celebrity, a star?

Does he want to be a serious leader?

When paparazzi manage to get pics of the Obama pecs and splash them, that's one thing. It's quite another when the Obama camp is encouraging Obama to be depicted as a cover boy. If it's not exactly encouraging it, then at least there's no effort to have the Washingtonian scrap its cover pic for something more dignified.

I think Obama, president of the United States, should be presented as a figure with more gravitas than Matthew McConaughey.

From ABC News:

President Obama appears shirtless in a bathing suit on the cover of May issue of The Washingtonian magazine. The magazine's excuse? The pec pic illustrates the #2 reason (out of 26) to love living in the nation’s capital: “Our New Neighbor is Hot.”

The monthly style/culture publication uses a paparazzi photograph taken during the president-elect’s Christmas vacation in Hawaii last year.

Long before that, in February 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama complained that a different beach pic got the media's attention instead of his policy positions, which he blamed on the meme that he was a lightweight.

But this time, White House aides -- who in the past have been appalled at the media's fascination with Mr. Obama shirtless -- today seemed nonplussed, one of them remarking that the President was in great shape.



Garrett Graff, editor-at-large at The Washingtonian, told ABC News the idea for the cover came during a discussion among the magazine’s staff about how, with the arrival of the Obamas, came a “celebrity aspect that has brought energy to the city and the attention of the paparazzi.”

“The Obamas are the center of attention here and the whole world is looking to Washington now in a way we haven’t seen in years,” Graff said, calling it “a real golden age of Washington.”

Now the golden age of Washington could certainly be illustrated with a photo of the president fully-clothed, perhaps in a tuxedo at an Inaugural Ball with his wife, first lady Michelle Obama.

...Graff said the magazine used the photo to illustrate two things: first, the president himself is hot – “you have a buff president and the paparazzi like taking shirtless photos of him,” Graff said – and second, the Obamas’ presence in Washington is “really hot.”

"Really hot"?

I guess that depends on what your definition of "really hot" is.

It's a relative term.

Personally, I'm not feeling it.

I would think the White House would want to downplay Obama as a pop culture figure and instead emphasize his intellect and vision and leadership qualities.

Maybe the strategy is to use photos of the shirtless Obama as a sort of opiate of the masses.

At best, the promotion of the shirtless Obama by the Obama team is a shallow stunt, meant to appeal to shallow people, relatively or entirely clueless on policy. At worst, it's dangerous to deflect attention from issues that matter.