KEY POINTS:
Thank heavens there's at least one thing that Barack Obama is lousy at.
Anxious to polish his credentials as an ordinary Joe, the super-polished and super-cool Democratic contender ventured the other day into a bowling alley while campaigning in Pennsylvania and - not to put too fine a point on it - disgraced himself.
His first few efforts failed to strike a single pin. In seven goes he managed just 37 points.
"Real men who aspire to the presidency should score 150," jeered Joe Scarborough, ex-Republican-Congressman turned-talk-radio-motormouth, describing Obama's performance as "dainty" and "prissy".
And in a way it was. Bowling in the US has traditionally been a blue-collar pastime.
Practitioners would not normally include a slender and graceful senator from Illinois, dressed in crisp white shirt and tie, elegantly loping to the delivery line, only to spray the ball into the gutter.
"My economic plan is better than my bowling," Obama assured fellow bowlers. "It has to be," one punter yelled back.
- INDEPENDENT
