There’s tough media coverage, there’s harsh media coverage, and then there’s … brutal media coverage. The New York Daily News, not exactly a bastion of conservative voices, provides the latter on Barack Obama’s “now watch this drive” moment yesterday:

An early look at tomorrow's front page. http://t.co/orsS8nH93j pic.twitter.com/H3Y657jSds

— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) August 21, 2014

Their article didn’t pull any punches, either:

President Obama put his own spin on the oft-quoted advice of predecessor Teddy Roosevelt: speak strongly and carry a nine iron.

The vacationing commander-in-chief returned to the golf course Wednesday after calling for justice in the brutal killing of an American journalist by ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) terrorists. …

The president zipped quickly from a local school to a Martha’s Vineyard golf course after his 12:45 p.m. media session. Obama delivered a short statement and took no questions from the assembled media.

And it doesn’t get any better for Obama at the Daily Mail. The British newspaper ran pictures of a laughing, jovial Obama on the links immediately following his five-minute statement about the beheading of an American citizen:

President Barack Obama reacted to the on-camera slaying of photojournalist James Foley for five minutes on Wednesday, telling a global audience that ‘when people harm Americans, anywhere, we do what’s necessary to see that justice is done.’

Less than 10 minutes after leaving the podium Obama teed-off and was seen laughing with friends and fist-bumping them during a five-hour game Farm Neck Golf Course on Martha’s Vineyard  – his seventh round in ten days. …

ABC News political director Rick Klein told Fox host Greta van Susteren that the White House is ‘well past the point of caring about the so-called “optics” of things like this. And the president himself clearly doesn’t … care about the way it looks.’

Klein said he found it ‘jarring to see him on the golf course just minutes after giving an address like this.’

What puzzles the NYDN’s Larry McShane is why Obama came back to work earlier in the week, but didn’t after the Foley beheading by ISIS and the subsequent revelation of the failed hostage rescue. Most of Washington’s been wondering about that too, and Investors Business Daily’s Michael Ramirez had some thoughts about that as well. If the videotaped butchering of an American journalist by the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization can’t encourage Obama back to the Oval Office, what did? Ramirez tees it up:

Maybe Obama should start puttering around the office a little more, eh? Allahpundit called this Obama’s “Now watch this drive” moment in an update to my post yesterday, and it seems that this is rapidly becoming the consensus.

Also, be sure to check out Ramirez’ terrific collection of his works: Everyone Has the Right to My Opinion, which covers the entire breadth of Ramirez’ career, and it gives fascinating look at political history.  Read my review here, and watch my interviews with Ramirez here and here.  And don’t forget to check out the entire Investors.com site, which has now incorporated all of the former IBD Editorials, while individual investors still exist.