Reporters get personal with Obama

By GottaLaff

What kind of tree is Barack Obama?

Reporters have been bombarding the president-elect’s transition office and those close to Obama with the most detail-obsessed questions about his every move.

Cabinet positions? Fuggetaboutit. Foreign affairs? Nah. Here are the pressing questions to President-elect Obama about which reporters demanded answers:

• Does Obama prefer Macs or PCs?
• Who designed that tie he's wearing?
  
• Where does he buy his suits?
  
• What's his morning exercise routine like?
  
• How about his basketball techniques?
  
• What movie has he seen recently?
  
• Who cuts his hair?
  
• Will he sell his house in Chicago?
• What did he have for Thanksgiving dinner?
  
• What’s his favorite food?
• Why hasn’t he been going to church on Sundays?
  
• And if he does start going regularly, where does he plan to attend church once he moves to Washington?
• Is he still smoking?
• Where does he get his ties?
• What kind of basketball player is he like?
• Can they play basketball with him sometime?

What's his major? Does he enjoy long walks on the beach? Who's he asking to prom?

When asked if he wore boxers or briefs, Obama said, "I don't answer those humiliating questions. But whichever one it is, I look good in 'em." Okay, that one piqued my interest.

At his first president-elect presser, Lynn Sweet asked him what books he was reading and what kind of dog he might buy for Malia and Sasha.

Sweet told Politico that she felt compelled to ask because “there are many moving parts to the story about Obama becoming president."

"And the personal side is also important to chronicle," she said.

How very Sweet.

Michael Strautmanis, a longtime friend of the soon-to-be first couple who will serve as the chief of staff to Assistant to the President Valerie Jarrett:

"One of the things people are going to learn is that, frankly, he's a little boring," Strautmanis said. "He likes to go home and be with his family. Michelle likes to stay home and watch 'The Dick Van Dyke Show.' They're a really traditional family." [...]

"Barack seems extraordinary to them but accessible," Strautmanis said. "They're looking for that real personal point to connect to him."

Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University, said that Obama's got Kennedyesque star power, and so he generates intense interest. He added that "the Internet era has also contributed to the need-to-know phenomenon."

Or maybe it's that he's genuinely personable, encourages dialog, has mass appeal, is someone many of us can relate to, is the anti-stodge, and is a gigantic breath of fresh air that a gasping post-Bush electorate hungers for the way Palin craves adulation.

In other words, they finally care enough to ask, because they're compensating for the charisma/intellect drought of the past eight years.