President Obama’s Other Game: Ping-Pong?

Everybody knows President Barack Obama is a baller. Basketball is the new golf in the White House, and it’s the diversion of choice of our young, hip President.

But amid all the recent talk of universal healthcare and through thousands of news articles analyzing President Obama’s every word about Iraq and Iran, one consistent thread has started to appear. And it raises a big question.

Does President Obama rock the ping-pong table too?

This is important stuff. National security, international relations, everything else takes a backseat. It’s time to blow the cover on President Obama’s secret ping-pong habit.

Take a look.

First, there’s this New York Times article. It spotlights the scrappy, grassroots feel of Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, and lets slip that the campaign finance team met around a ping-pong table. There’s one.

Then the Sydney Morning Herald, in turn, mentions in this retrospective on Obama’s childhood that the future U.S. President learned table tennis at nine years old from his parents’ landlord in Jakarta, Indonesia.

But that’s nothing. Longtime followers of Obama will remember a controversial ping-pong-related incident while he served as an Illinois state senator. In 2001, Obama urged Illinois officials to award a $50,000 tourism grant to a company called Killerspin, owned by Obama supporter and former employer Robert Blackwell.

Killerspin is a ping-pong company—they make table tennis equipment, accessories and clothing. The “tourism” that the grant involved was the hosting of international ping-pong tournaments in Chicago.

Naysayers point to foul play, saying that Obama advocated the use of state funds to repay, quid pro quo, a political supporter and former legal client.

But to be fair, the state ended up supporting the table tennis tournaments for several years, funding Killerspin to the tune of $320,000. The original grant didn’t even total Obama’s recommended $50,000, but instead only $20,000.

Perhaps the Leader of the Free World just digs ping-pong.

But still, none of this answers our question: Is Obama actually any good with a paddle? The inside source says yes.

“He’s pretty good,” says Blackwell.

We know, as well, that the President doesn’t have to go far to practice. In June of this year the Obamas acquired a ping-pong table for the White House—a Stiga 410Q Tournament Series Tennis Table, to be exact—in what the press release called a “personal purchase” by President Obama himself.

And how about the rest of the family? Count them in. People Magazine reported in January, in more hard-breaking news, that the young Obama girls had beaten one of the Jonas Brothers at ping-pong.

Nick Jonas, age 16, apparently fell victim to Malia (age 11) and Sasha (age 8) in a game backstage at The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Making it even worse was Nick’s older brother Joe feeling the need to defend him.

“[There was] a little pressure with the 25 Secret Service agents there,” 19-year-old Joe said.

Just let it go, man. Let it go.

It is, admittedly, a far cry from the famous “Ping-Pong Diplomacy” of the 1970′s. Under President Richard Nixon’s watchful eye the U.S. table tennis team visited China, breaking the ice on China-U.S. relations and paving the way for Nixon’s famous personal visit to China in 1972.

With Barack Obama leading the way, is ping-pong set to become the next big thing in the United States? Is he the vanguard of a young, cool ping-pong revolution?

Well, no. But it’s always nice to see something like this, when Obama’s presidential predecessors have often been so stuffy.

It almost makes the President seem like a regular guy.