Tom Brokaw, David Gregory, and Chris Matthews daintily allude to Obama's masculinity deficit.

On yesterday's "Meet the Press," Tom Brokaw said it was "just inexplicable" that the Obamacare website "suddenly landed the way that it did, in utter chaos." The President should have pressured "Kathy Sebelius and other people" about the "rollout" which was "going to be our big play for the second term."

"Big play" picks up on that football metaphor Obama used 4 times in his November 14th remarks. "We fumbled," he said, though in real football, it's an individual player who fumbles. But here was this "big play," and somebody fumbled. Was it "Kathy"?

The moderator David Gregory, immediately steps up to frame the next question in macho terms: "Who's got the muscle?" The manly (though 50-years-dead) JFK somehow shoulders his way into the conversation. Gregory turns to Chris Matthews and says:

You were making the point to me this week about, you know, where's his Bobby Kennedy? Who's got the muscle? When the president says, and he did say, "The user experience of this website is everything," who had the muscle in the White House to get it done and make sure the president gets what he wants?

Muscle, muscle, muscle. If a right-winger had phrased the question that way, somebody would call this misogyny. These 3 men — Brokaw, Gregory, and Matthews — are hankering for a muscular man who can nail the big play. He depended on a Kathy when he needed a Bobby. And here's what Chrissy Matthews said:

Everybody goes to their battle stations when there's chaos. 

I'll see you your football metaphor, and raise you a military metaphor.

You always go to where you've been arguing before. But I've always been arguing this president doesn't have a chain of command, a very clear line of authority and unique responsibility. I remember Sebelius, who I like of course, most people do like her, she's a public servant. 

She's liked. Kathy's likeable enough. She's a good servant.

But when she was asked, "Who's in charge?" in that committee, under oath, she started to talk about someone, the head of C.M.S., who handles Medicare and Medicaid. Among 30 or 40 other responsibilities, this person had the rollout responsibilities.

And was "this person" male or female? Female. Marilyn Tavenner. Can you say her name without vaulting back in time to your old macho icons Jack and Bobby? They knew what "responsibilities" to give their Marilyn.

Matthews reaches even further back, to an even manlier man:

Look at Japan, the occupation of Japan, it simple: Put one guy in charge, Doug MacArthur. 

Put one guy in charge. Doug. Call him Doug, not Douglas. Not — in the style of "Kathy" — Dougy. He's Doug. And there was a guy! Put one guy in charge.

You put somebody in charge and they're uniquely responsible for its success or failure. Obama doesn't do things that way. He's got floaters, like Valerie Jarett, floating around. 

Floaters. Like Valerie Jarrett. The disrespect! They can't even spell her name right in the transcript. Floaters, like Valerie Jarrett, floating around. Matthews being a good Democrat somehow feels secure that the double meaning of "floaters" won't bring on the accusations of racism that would surely have burst forth if a Republican had talked about Jarrett like that.

He doesn't want to have a real chief of staff, like a Jim Baker.

He's saying — it's hardly subtle — that Jarrett's not a real man. You need a man. A man like Bobby or Doug or Jim.

He doesn't want to give authority to people, and I think it's been a real problem.

So what does this say about Obama, not wanting to bring in real men, who take charge, who make the play, who exert authority? He's not man enough to work alongside real men? He needs to play with the ladies, ladies who don't know their place — who dither and float?

"Tom Brokaw declined his invitation to this year's White House Correspondents’ Dinner because of Lindsay Lohan."

"'Somewhere along the line, it began to freewheel out of control,' the renowned anchorman told Politico about the celeb-filled soiree, 'and the breaking point for me was Lindsay Lohan.'"

The trouble-making actress was invited as a guest of Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren at the 2012 dinner. Page Six’s Cindy Adams recalled how Lohan disappeared a few times to the bathroom for a cigarette and tipped a bathroom attendant a crumpled $100 and said, "You’re too old to be doing this."

Hey, Lindsay's right. We're all too old.

"Sperling Admits Obama Misled in Debate: The President Did Propose the Sequester."

"We put forth the design of' the sequestration, Sperling finally admits after a long back-and-forth."



Here's the whole "Meet the Press" transcript. Here's the part about Bob Woodward:

DAVID GREGORY: Here was an e-mail from you to Bob Woodward that was released. In it: "I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying that the president asking for revenues is moving the goalpost. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim." When you said "you will regret staking out that claim," what did you mean?

GENE SPERLING: I meant that, while the first issue of whose idea it was, the sequester, was one I disagreed with him on but I could see how honorable people could disagree. I was trying to explain to him, from a substantive point of view, that the idea that the president of the United States was moving the goalpost by asking for the type of balance of tax reform that raised revenues, that the Speaker Boehner himself, as you noted, had called for, as well as long-term entitlements, together, to get rid of the sequester, was not only not moving the goalpost: That was the whole idea of the sequester. And I think that e-mail was cordial. It was substantive. It was polite.

DAVID GREGORY: But you say, "You're going to regret it." I mean, does the president think that's a good idea to say to reporters, to challenge them that, "You're going to regret staking out that claim"?

GENE SPERLING: Well, David, I've had 20-year relationship with Bob Woodward. It's been friendly, it's been cordial. Those e-mails are very substantive. They're cordial, they're friendly. And his reply to me--

DAVID GREGORY: Why do you think he's gone public with it and made an issue of it?

GENE SPERLING: Well, David, I guess I'd ask people to look at his reply. His reply said, "Gene, you don't need to apologize." He said he welcomed my advice. So I can't really explain it. All I can say, David, is I hope Bob and I can put this behind us because I think it takes away the focus--

DAVID GREGORY: Were you threatening him in any way?

Later in the show, Gregory asked Tom Brokaw to opine on the Woodward/Sperling "threat" question, and he said:

I've known Bob a long time, going back to his seminal days as a Watergate reporter. And I'm confident that White Houses have made him a lot more uncomfortable than that e-mail over the course of the years when he's talked to them. Any reporter who's worked in this town has been yelled at by somebody in the White House or somebody on the Hill. It just comes with the territory.

This is a speck that became a sandstorm overnight, unfortunately, and I think it's really reflective of the kind of media environment in which we live now, in which everybody's looking to stir something up. When I was covering Watergate, there was a wise old bird who did commentary for The New Republic, and his named John Osborne. He was one of the great, great commentators in this town.

He took me to lunch one day, and he'd had a blowup with the White House the day before. And he looked at me and he said, "You know, Brokaw, the problem is that journalists, all of us, we've got glass jaws. We throw punches; when somebody swings back, we go down with the first punch, screaming foul of some kind." I think that's what we have to keep in mind.

Reading Bob between the lines here in his last appearances, I think he does believe it kind of got out of his control at some point. We've got to move on. The country doesn't care about this. This is about an intramural fight in a high school cafeteria; it should be over now.

Hear that? It should be over now.