What's All The Fuss About?!

HERE I WAS, EAGERLY ANTICIPATING A WILD AND CRAZY ride, looking forward to reading every salacious detail of 22-year old Barack Obama's romantic dalliance with his Aussie girlfriend from her journal's "juicy" (?) recollections in Vanity Fair as the goofy Tamron Hall intimated she couldn't talk about some of the "sexual" content in girlfriend's hot journal entries. (Incidentally, I think I figured out what accounts for Tamron's terrific curves: It's her daily Burger diet.)

So, based on Tamron's tittilated reaction (she's not the only one; the women went a little nuts with, let's face it, their romance novel syndrome) I began scanning the article for accounts of wild parties at Studio 54, round-the-clock sex explicitly detailed, drugs, and rock 'n roll ... Instead, what do I find?

A young Barack spending nights at the University library, open 24 hours, where it's warm; hooking up with an Aussie chick, diplomat's daughter, getting laid but not as a one night stand (what a romantic prude, Barack!); discussing postmodern literature and quoting T.S. Eliot; on Sundays lounging around barechested doing the New York Times crossword puzzle while wearing a blue and white sarong (pitter-patter goes Tamron's heart — FYI provincial Beltway denizens, Texans etc., back in the day reading the Sunday Times was a program, along with brunch; how very bourgeois of His Barackness); writing long, poetic, political, beautifully literate letters (I've written epistolaries in my day, how 'bout you?); going on theater dates, to museums (who can resist the Met?), Italian restaurants of the type still extant in Little Italy; racing girlfriend in the park, letting her win (how romantically gallant ... 'pass the barf bag'); being cool, aloof, guarded, veiled (OH MY), so girlfriend says (a test) "I love you" and Barack replies politely, "thank you."

Tamron and her girlfriends are mystified and incensed: Why didn't he say, "I love you too"? But guys totally get it; she's making her commitment move, so pull back and don't up the emotional ante, best to let her down easy, politely but noncommitally; inevitably living together brings tension, Barack has flare-up over doing the dishes (how quotidian!); they push each other away. One of ten million stories in the big city. Next chapter ... Any questions?

Hmm ... Twenty-something President Obama was an incurable romantic, an introspective intellectual, who wrote beautifully. Fits right into the mainstream lives of great American presidents, like Jefferson and Lincoln. Who'd a thunk it?