Par for the Course

Hey, if the Post can write crappy puns in headlines, so can I!

Media Research Center's Tim Graham posting over at Newsbusters calls attention to an odd story in the Sports section: Life's Fairway Widens for Whitman, a light feature about the former New Jersey governor. She plays golf (looks like I slightly better her 5-iron length, which is terrific since her handicap is like half mine). Her Dad was a club champion, and she won mother-daughter tournaments with her... Mom. Neat.

The story isn't necessarily odd just because we get this aside from Whitman:

"The Republican Party has never been this narrow, litmus-test type party," claimed Whitman, who plays to a 14.8 handicap index. "We can disagree on an issue like choice or stem cell research and not be an enemy or a bad person. We need to get away from this approach that we see more and more today, that you can't be a good Republican if you don't believe certain things in a certain way."

In her book, "It's My Party Too," which came out earlier this year, she was critical of the Bush administration for how it disengaged from the Kyoto accord on global warming. At the same time, Whitman, who served as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency until June 2003, praised President Bush for his efforts in other environmental areas.

I mean, Tim is banging his head on the wall at Newsbusters because we can't escape conservative-rapping politics even in the sports section. Yep. (See my hed--Par for the Course. Ha ha ha! Sometimes I crack myself up!)

But what's the hook for this item?  The club where she's playing is in Bernardsville, N.J., not particularly close to Ardmore, Pa., the home of Merion Golf Club, which is featured today as the site of the U.S. Amateur.  Maybe she's hanging around Merion this week, but there's no mention of it. A caption that could have read former New Jersey Gov. and EPA chief Christine Todd Whitman is hangin' at Merion this week actually reads "The Republican Party has never been this narrow, litmus-test type art," said former EPA head Christine Todd Whitman, who plays to a 14.8 handicap. Go figure.