Basketball Ides of March

Washington Monthly writer Steve Benen gets paid to comment on all things political -- no matter how trivial. Today, Benen is obligated to expend digital ink on Republican outrage over the president taking time to fill out his "March Madness" NCAA brackets on ESPN. The segment featuring our Sports Nut in Chief will take a whole nine minutes. Yet detractors like Rush Limbaugh complain that Obama is putting college basketball over other pressing issues like, you know, invading Libya and stuff. If average Americans were paying attention to this "issue" (and they aren't), they'd agree that the argument is utter nonsense. To paraphrase Abe Lincoln, this faux controvery is of the media, by the media and for the media in the hope that its ratings shall not perish from the earth.