No love for America’s President at America’s Favorite Past time?

Last night, President George Bush threw out the ceremonial first pitch at the Washington Nationals baseball game for the season opener at the team’s new $611 million stadium.Bush, an avid baseball fan, wore a Nationals warm-up jacket as he delivered a high pitch down the middle.

Interestingly, while many blogs say Bush was raucously booed by the sold-out crowd as he jogged onto the field, Reuters described the crowd’s reception of the president as “chorus of cheers and boos”.

Well we have the vid, you be the judge.

SIDENOTE: Has any other U.S. president ever been booed throwing the ceremonial first pitch at a baseball game? Special prize for anyone who can dig up an answer.

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Somehow, the Democratic Party divide over its presidential candidates has affected…Fox?

On the network’s Fox and Friends show, Chris Wallace criticized his own network for two hours of “Obama-bashing”.

In an e-mail, Obama campaign praised Wallace, called Fox Network “deeply irresponsible”. From the campaign’s blog:

We appreciate Chris Wallace for doing his job as a tough but fair journalist on a network that has been deeply irresponsible over the last week in its unrelenting and sensationalistic coverage of Sen. Obama.

Sen. Obama gave the speech he did on Tuesday because he believes that Americans are ready for a thoughtful, mature discussion about race, and are hungry to move past media-generated controversies that distract from the struggles they face in their everyday lives.

If Fox News wants to play clips of the same offensive sound bites every day from now until November, that’s their right, but that type of coverage does a disservice to their viewers and to a nation that is facing serious challenges that merit thoughtful and honest reporting.

//REACTION

Newsweek

The speech was one of the defining moments of his presidential run, rivaling his widely heralded victory addresses following his wins in Iowa and South Carolina. Obama broke with the pattern, played out by both major contenders for the Democratic nomination, of distancing themselves from controversial supporters, applauding their resignations and plunging back into the talking points. Obama used the constant harping on Wright’s strident remarks as an opening to delve into the thorny complications of race in America

Toby Harnden, The Daily Telegraph (UK)

It was undoubtedly a very powerful speech – ambitious, eloquent, emotional, passionate, ambitious, challenging, risky and intensely personal. Obama went a long way towards striking the difficult balance of repudiating Wright’s outrageous comments while placing them in the context of Wright’s broader achievements and life as well as the American black experience.

Trey Ellis, Yahoo News

Obama’s speech just now was magnificent not because he relied on soaring rhetoric but because he eschewed it. He spoke simply and directly about one of the third rails of American politics from his unique vantage point as a black man with white ancestors and the child of an immigrant. His analysis was measured and brilliant in how he empathized with disgruntled and cynical black youths defeated by racism, but urged them to transcend; how he also empathized with struggling white workers unsympathetic to America’s history of discrimination and yet urged them, too, to join in the fight to better this nation. What he did this morning in Philadelphia was put his theory of change into practice.

Dan Balz, Washington Post

Neither Obama nor his advisers can know at this point where the Wright controversy will lead. It is not likely that one speech, however well-crafted, can put it to rest. But the test of leadership is to turn adversity into opportunity and on Tuesday Obama took it. Now he must await the judgment of the voters.