It's Not Barack Obama's Official Portrait, But We Are *Loving* It! (GET IT???)
Best Obama suit ever.
You may have seen the Tweets going around today claiming this is Barack Obama's "official White House portrait," which is a nice bit of flummery based on a Facebook post, and almost certainly not the case. In fact, just a bit of looking around with the Googles shows it to be the work of an arteest in the Netherlands, Edwin Van Den Dikkenberg, who probably would like some credit for the thing, so thank you Mr. Van Den Dikkenberg!
The "2015" in the signature probably shoulda been a tipoff, huh? (MUST CREDIT WONKETTE!)
It's an awfully nice painting of Barack Obama wearing that tan suit that everybody went silly over for several hours longer than "Covfefe." Yes, even Yr Wonkette:
As The Root reminds us, Rep. Peter King lost his shit over the tan suit, since it was far too cheerful for President Obama to wear on the day he held a press conference on ISIS, which had murdered journalist James Foley a week before. Yes, in some Republicans' minds there's a rule about how long a president whose middle name is "Hussein" has to wait before wearing a light suit. In August. Also, did you see how much Obama golfed? Really disrespectful to America.
So even if that's not going to be Barack Obama's official portrait, today is worth noting anyway, because it's the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Loving v. Virginia, which struck down laws barring interracial marriage and made Barack Obama's parents' marriage legitimate in all 50 states. Or at least it would have, if Barack Hussein Obama Sr. and Stanley Ann Dunhamn hadn't gotten divorced in 1964, when little Barack was but a preschooler. But it's the PRINCIPAL of the thing, and also we wanted to find an excuse to use the portrait for your Open Thread, and merely clarifying its provenance seemed anticlimactic. So happy Loving day! (See? Hardly a stretch at all!)
OK, get to your open threading, you nutbags.
Yr Wonkette is supported by reader contributions. Help us draw semi-meaningful connections by clicking that "Donate" clicky down below, will you?
[ Edwin Van Den Dikkenberg / TPM / The Root / NPR ]
Well, they do it as a matter of last resort, and what you're describing doesn't sound nearly as severe as what my little guy had to go through so the chances of that happening are pretty slim.
Sorry, it's just the terminology that bothers me now, not the procedure itself.