Obama Cracks Joke About Scalia’s Death

Speaking to the nation’s governors at the National Governors Association meeting at the White House on Tuesday, Barack Obama cracked a joke that implicitly referred to the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s death only days after Obama refused to attend the justice’s funeral.

Referring to his lame-duck status as president, Obama jested, “Some of you might be in the final year of your last term, working as hard as you can to get as much done as possible for the folks that you represent: fixing roads, educating our children, helping people retrain, appointing judges.” After a pause for effect, Obama delivered his punch line: “The usual stuff.”

Some governors laughed.

But conservatives reacted with fury to Obama’s implied reference to Scalia’s death as “the usual stuff.” Young Conservatives called Obama “The most classless president to ever grace the face of the planet.” The Conservative Tribune called the reference “a vicious joke.” RedStateWatcher titled its article, “Zero Respect: Obama Cracks Joke About Scalia’s Death.”

Obama’s ostensible excuse for eschewing an appearance at Scalia’s funeral, as the White House explained to the New York Times, was partially based on the “potential for the extensive presidential security detail to be disruptive.”

Obama didn’t miss a beat when it came to his golfing game, however, going golfing on Sunday. That was in line with his practice of preferring golfing to attending funerals; when Polish president Lech Kaczynski was killed in a plane crash in 2010, Obama said he would attend the funeral but went golfing instead.

Here’s a short list of funerals Obama has attended while president:

Sen. Ted Kennedy (D)

Walter Cronkite

Dorothy Height, civil rights activist

Se. Robert Byrd (D)

Sen. Daniel Inouye

Former Speaker of the House Tom Foley (D)

Nelson Mandela

Beau Biden

Clementa Pinckney

Some of the funerals he has skipped:

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon

Adolfo Suarez Gonzalez, president of Spain

Richard von Weizsäcker, president of Germany

Kim Young-sam, president of South Korea

Last April, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Obama offered this: “After the midterm elections, my advisors asked me, “Mr. President, do you have a bucket list?” And I said, “Well, I have something that rhymes with bucket list.’ Take executive action on immigration? Bucket. New climate regulations? Bucket. It’s the right thing to do.”

Apparently, joking about a man’s death which opens the path for a leftist-dominated Supreme Court is on Obama’s “bucket” list.

After all, it’s the “right thing to do.”