Few questions are more important than whether or not the White House bowling alley, installed by Richard Nixon, has a future in an Obama Administration. As chronicled in The Wall Street Journal, hoops will be the diversion of choice for the president-elect and his lane-slashing cabinet:
"I think we are putting together the best basketball-playing cabinet in American history," the president-elect said at a news conference earlier this week.
During the campaign, Mr. Obama said he planned to replace the white House bowling alley--installed by Richard Nixon in 1969--with an indoor basketball court.
Obama uses Dr. Naismith's game to blow off steam before big speeches, and has scheduled a 3-on-3 game before his inaugural address on Jan. 20th. Given that the current White House court is outdoors, and the fact that Obama will be facing a host of hand-wringing winter time decisions right out of the gate, the need for an indoor rim is paramount. But should the new court come at the expense of the most famous bowling lane in the country?
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
