For some 18 months during Obama I, Barry and Reggie Love, "special assistant" a young former Duke basketball star and a White House resident, were sequestered in a “den” equipped with very large flat-screen TV’s tuned to various ESPN basketball outlets. Occasionally, they would venture out as far as the White House gym to “shoot some hoops,” or attend a sporting event together. Meals, snacks, and drinks were brought into to them. For days on end, the only visitor regularly allowed to enter the inner sanctum was Valerie Jarrett. She also acted as doorkeeper for any other administration officials or cabinet members requesting an audience.
During this unremarked-upon period in his Presidency, the POTUS and Mr. Love traveled the country together. The Presidential golf game became an obsession. He literally did nothing else for long periods of time. It was also during this time that a new tradition of “Michelle and the Girls’” separate vacations began. Separately or together, the Presidential Family and Mr. Love traveled and vacationed extensively, spending many weeks away from Washington.
As the demands of the 2012 campaign developed, the tenure of Mr. Love as a live-in companion ended abruptly. A rather homoerotic video featuring Mr. Love somehow emerged on the Web, from which it was quickly removed. Even more quickly, Mr. Love was removed from Washington, DC, with an overnight relocation reminiscent of the Witness Protection Program. He had effectively been disappeared, forced into a brief, but very well paid exile.
The staff handled the sudden disappearance. The President was never mentioned. Among the media, no questions were been asked about this interesting White House residential companion. Once the election was won, Reggie Love quickly resurfaced. Although no longer a White house resident, he joins the President on the road on both “official” jaunts and personal travels and appearances.
The media ignore this of course, although the relationship appears at least as close as that between J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, about which many millions of words have been written.
Ho-Hum.