Mr. Madden,

I understand you're bored out of your skull right now, and I enjoy your consistently well written articles, but you still got a pretty sweet job and really should not be complaining (which you are).

enough about being bored on the job [it happens a lot here in the us of a]...what's obama's handicap?

In other words, cry me a river. Most of us who are journalists (or who were at one time) would gladly give up a major appendage to be in your bored, self-pitying shoes.

You have a great job, even on boring days. If you're that bored with it, let Salon hire me, I'll move back to DC and happily sit in that press van with nary a complaint.

1) While I certainly resent it every time I have to work on the weekends, look at the bright side: when I have to work weekends, it's usually because I'm on some horrific project deadline, and am working like a maniac to complete. By comparison, spending a Sunday afternoon at a base P/X isn't that bad.

2) Get an iPhone, or some other portable media device. I travel from my home in Austin to the SF Bay Area every other weekend, and if I didn't have hundreds of books, dozens of games, a round dozen TV shows, and 4-5 movies available in my hand, I would go nuts. It's worth the money if you get stuck with pool duty.

3) However boring pool duty is, I was glad to read your post about it. Why? For those of us who complain about the beltway press--myself included--the glimpse inside how you spend your days is valuable. I would be interested in other gritty details, even to what kind of transport you get stuck on (with or without A/C in the brutal D.C. summers?), how often you are on pool duty, what you do on days when it's not "boring," why there are multiple press folks on pool duty instead of just one (in the Computer Biz, we call that "duplication of effort"), how early you have to report for it, and so on.

Just a few thoughts.

As far as I know there is no legal requirement for any coverage of the President. Given the inherently stenographic nature of most of the product produced by the White House Press Corp there isn't much need for any coverage most of the time.

I suggest you try selling your seat in that SUV to one of the many people who would love to do the pool thing. Win-win, unless of course something actually happens.

Wow. As a previous commenter said, cry me a river.

If you want to let us know about how pool duty works, that's great. If you want to give us insigt into the media, awesome.

But if you want to whine abut working on Sunday, and that you work does not require you to do anything? Bring a book. Buy an iPhone. Learn something. Listen to great podcasts. Write something great, truly great.

You have so many options. Whining shouldn't be necessay. Asking that Obama stop playing golf for your sake -- as opposed to out of rspect for the fallen -- is just pathetic.

Seriously, invest in a PSP, or a Nintendo DS. Perhaps a book. But books are slightly less interactive, unless turning pages is interactive.

Well, would you? :-)

Dear Editor:

Mike Madden starts off telling us how deadly-boring presidential press pool rotation is, and then at the very end starts making it genuinely interesting by revealing, just a teensy bit, what Washington circuit journalists actually do with their time.

As someone who is generally not afraid to find out how the sausage is made, I find that a much more interesting topic than some of the things that obsess War Room, and would enjoy learning more about who's who in the White House, what they do, how they do it, and what kinds of conversations Mike Madden has with them.

Maybe that's making a virtue of necessity, but isn't that kind of the ethos of Salon?

instead of a tame hack, you would be finding out, and reporting, what mighty obama, king of the beltway, is actually doing. is it really golf? what's his handicap? why three golf courses? any pretty young women being ferried into the locker room? who is he playing with, at whatever game?

like the other hacks who were fed 'official' news for the last 50 years, you are not reporting, just broadcasting.

just because obama may be taking a day off is no reason for you to think you should too.

inquiring minds want to know.

He can't take some time off to play a round of golf because you are bored? How about if you have your readers submit whiney posts about the boring stuff they have to do? Honestly, is there not a single member of the Beltway press corps who isn't an effing primadonna?

You'd have cranked out a dozen stupid patronizing piece of shit columns on inner city race relations.

He just showed us, at the All-Star Game, that he cannot throw a baseball well at all. (If I were not politically correct, I would write that he throws like a girl.) We learned and saw that he is a pathetic bowler (worse than many little kids). People tell us that he is an okay basketball player, but we have seen no video.

We want him to be good at a sport. Can he play golf? Inquiring liberals want to know.

Did you really expect us to be sympathetic? Lots of people have boring jobs but not too many people get paid to sit around and do nothing. As other commenters suggested, bring a frickin' book or for that matter, write a frickin' book.

So Abu Obongo tries to play golf, why not. He's got that socialist Israeli Chief of Staff looking after things. Then Mrs. Obama is stranded in London with a Boeing 757, secret service and embassy employees looking after her.

The two of them remind one of of those African Presidents FOR LIFE and how they live life high on the hog. Oh Oh mustn't use the term hog with muslims.