Obama: Could he hurt a fly?

last updated 8 January 2015

To his “scarily long list” of accomplishments, Barack Obama has just added another title: “fly swatter in chief,” said Ed Pilkington in the London Guardian. In the course of a televised interview with CNBC, the president was irritated by a buzzing sound around his head—and this time it wasn’t Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, or Sean Hannity. When a pesky fly disobeyed his order to scram, settling instead on his left hand, Obama “moved into killer mode.” With “the grace of a tai chi master,” he raised his right hand so slowly it did not alert the fly that danger was looming, then brought it down with speed and force, producing a “sharp clap like the sound of a whip cracking.” The camera “panned to the hapless insect lying belly-up on the White House carpet.”

Some saw “a mystical, metaphorical dimension” to Obama’s display of manly aggression, said Maureen Dowd in The New York Times. Up to now, the president’s critics have contended that he has been “too prone to negotiation, comity, and splitting the difference,” but when the fly invaded his airspace, “the Chill One caught it, crushed it, and kicked it aside,” saying, “I got the sucker!” The president’s slavish “media chorus” joined in the gloating, said Kevin O’Brien in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. But if the fly incident had occurred during George W. Bush’s presidency, you can be sure the press would have reacted quite differently. Pundits would be blaming Bush for a “failure of diplomacy,” and for giving the fly inadequate warning before resorting to unilateral, deadly force.

Not everyone was impressed with Obama’s big kill, said Mark Krikorian in National Review Online. The “loons” at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals issued a statement lamenting the “execution” of a helpless creature. PETA also vowed to send the White House “one of its Katcha Bug Humane Bug Catcher contraptions,” said Mark Leibovich in The New York Times. But even though the White House admits it is battling a fly infestation these days, staffers are not likely to rely on PETA’s fancy catch-and-release gizmos. The “First Exterminator” has already equipped his aides with old-fashioned fly swatters, and he’s been known to deploy briefing papers to deadly effect. All of which puts a new twist on the old question: “How’d you like to be a fly on the wall in the Oval Office?” The answer these days: “not so much.”