President Obama ludicrously defended attending the baseball game between the Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays in the wake of the Brussels terror attack by invoking Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz’s response to the Boston Marathon Bombings:

When Ortiz went out and said probably the only time that America didn’t have a problem with somebody, a person on live TV, was when he talked about Boston, how strong it was and that it was not going to be intimidated.

The President is referring to Big Papi’s “this is our f#&kin’ city” remarks at Fenway Park. But Ortiz made those remarks on April 20, 2013 prior to a game against the Kansas City Royals. This was five days after the bombing and less than 24 hours after authorities detained Dzokhar Tsarnaev in a day long manhunt which shut down a good deal of the city. In fact, because of the manhunt the Red Sox-Royals game scheduled that evening was actually postponed.

In fact, the bombings took place about 40 minutes after the Red Sox had concluded its game with the Tampa Bay Rays as the team made its way to Cleveland for a three game series against the Indians. Because of the Boston Marathon and because of Patriot’s Day, the Red Sox began that game at 11:05 a.m. Had the Red Sox been scheduled to play that evening the game surely would have been postponed as was the case with the Boston Bruins who were scheduled to host the Ottawa Senators at The Garden. In fact, during the manhunt, the Bruins would also postpone their game this time against the Pittsburgh Penguins. 

Obama told ESPN during the game, “It’s always a challenge when you have a terrorist attack anywhere in the world, particularly in this age of 24/7 news coverage. You want to be respectful and understand the gravity of the situation, but the whole premise of terrorism is to try to disrupt people’s ordinary lives.”

As a resident of Boston, I can tell you that terrorism disrupted life here and that there sure as hell no Red Sox or Bruins game going on while the bombers were at large.

If Obama wants to demonstrate that life goes on in defiance of terrorism he should do so in Brussels, not in Havana.