Americans Head to the Beach

Everyone from President Obama and his daughter Sasha to Kate Gosselin and her kids hit the beach in the final weeks of summer.  INSIDE EDITION has the scoop.

Kate Gosselin and her 8 kids enjoyed the summer fun, hitting the beach in North Carolina. INSIDE EDITION also found notorious flight attendant Steven Slater soaking up the sun near his home in Queens, New York.

INSIDE EDITION has learned more about the photo of President Obama and daughter Sasha swimming on Florida's gulf coast to help boost tourism after the BP oil disaster.

The moment was captured by the official White House photographer. The White House Press Corps was not permitted to follow the Obamas to the beach.

"We're not gonna let the press pool come, because you all will take a picture of me without my shirt on," joked President Obama.

Obama didn't want photographers to recreate a hunky shot from 2008 showing him bare-chested on the beach in Hawaii when he was president-elect.

The recent photo at the beach had media outlets weighing in.

The New York Daily News quipped, "New no-show abs policy."

The Associated Press, however, refused to distribute the photo taken by the official White House photographer, citing, "To circulate an image we could have taken ourselves is the visual equivalent of printing a press release."  

By the way, the president and his daughter weren't technically swimming in the gulf. They were actually in saint Andrew's Bay, which is about a mile away because the other beach was closed to swimming because of riptides.

Meanwhile, Obama is facing a storm of controversy over his remarks that Muslims have a right to build that mosque near ground zero.

After a blissful day at the beach, however, it was back to reality.