WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama tried to draw attention to independently owned businesses on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, a day that is increasingly being marketed as one for deal-hungry consumers to remember to patronize these mom-and-pop outlets while doing their holiday shopping.
He bought bags of books — 17 titles in all — during a stop at Politics and Prose, a popular Washington bookstore now owned by a former Washington Post reporter and his wife, also a former Post reporter who also worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton at the White House and State Department.
In recent years, the Saturday after Thanksgiving has been advertised as “Small Business Saturday.” It’s designed to drive foot traffic to independent businesses in between the frenzy of Black Friday sales at mass retailers and the Cyber Monday deals available online.
Obama browsed the bookstore’s racks with his daughters, Malia and Sasha. He held one shopper’s baby and chatted with author David Baldacci. While paying at the cash register, another patron encouraged Obama to close the U.S. facility in Cuba where suspected terrorists are detained.
“Hope you can close Guantanamo,” the patron said.
“We’re working on it,” Obama replied, then cheerily added to the crowd of shoppers: “Any other issues?”
Obama also joked, “Hope it works,” when he handed his credit card to the cashier. That appeared to be a reference to when a restaurant declined his card while he dined out in New York City in late September.
Obama bought a mix of titles apparently chosen to satisfy readers young and old. The White House declined to reveal how much he paid.
Among the books in the president’s shopping bags for mature readers were “Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth and Faith in the New China” by New Yorker writer Evan Osnos, “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End” by surgeon Atul Gawande and “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr.
For younger readers, Obama’s purchases included three titles in the “Redwall” series by Brian Jacques, two titles in the Junie B. Jones series by Barbara Park and “A Barnyard Collection: Click, Clack, Moo and More” by Doreen Cronin.
Obama and his daughters also shopped at Politics and Prose on the Saturday after Thanksgiving last year.
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I voted for Obama. Now, I now have the same revulsion to him as dubya, since they are one and the same. Will I ever vote again for any dem or gop candidate? Here we have a War Criminal committing Crimes Against Humanity and he is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace, shopping happily with his family. The horror of Obama is every bit the horror levied upon the world and America by dubya and dick.
Click clack Moo? I can’t wait for the Fox News expose on Obama’s choice of a pro union socialist children’s book that’s brainwashing your kids!
I see you are pure and better than the rest of us humans. I’m one of the lesser mortals. I know I’m part and parcel of this mess that is the earth. It’s the continual harping on Good and Evil that I can’t take.
You know scientists found out there’s no such thing as “bad” bacteria. All of it is needed, at some time in your life. Scale that up to the ecosystem that is humanity. Excluding bacteria messes up your gut. Excluding people …
Well, I see that the Republican/Faux News strategy of vilifying President Obama and preventing him from doing anything meaningful has worked on you too. Perhaps you should complete your descent into self-flagellated stupidity and send a donation to your local Republican organizing committee.
I wish he picked up a copy of Charles Darwin’s The Origin Of Species, just because I know it would piss off all the right people.