Sunday, May 10, 2009

Obama Wows the Washington Press

If President Obama ever wants to make a career change, he has a great future ahead of him as a stand up comedian. He wowed em in Washington at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner last night. Thank you MSNBC for broadcasting the whole thing live. I had a ball.

The prez was a hoot, throwing out zingers and one liners like a Las Vegas pro. His timing was perfect. My favorite line was about Dick Cheney's memoirs being tentatively titled " How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People. " I also loved the part about Rahm Emanuel having a hard time with Mothers Day because " he isn't used to saying the word day after the word mother". Is that clever, sophisticated material or what?

President Obama was polished, pointed and funny, but never stepped over the line into slapstick or bad taste. He even managed to make fun of himself with grace and style. What a guy!

It says something about the state of the media that the New York Times, for the third year in a row, refused to attend the event out of journalistic scrupulousness, while the twitterati were live blogging every real-time detail from their iphones(#nerdprom).

For those of you who didn't catch President Obama's comic debut last night, here's the video from Youtube-- all nine and a half minutes of it. Enjoy!


2 comments:

The Millionaires Of The Bible said...

The hint at a media bailout caught my attention.

Devoting more money to print media/newspapers won't change people's viewing habits.

I have not picked up a newspaper in 2 years. I can get whatever I want news-wise from my laptop in seconds. Free and convenient.

I would like to see an even balance between print/internet but the manner in which the news media has evolved has made any equilibrium and impossibility.

Ryan

Unknown said...

No hint of a media bailout here--I too get most of my news from the internet and haven't bought a magazine or newspaper in years. Newspapers are about to go the way of the illuminated manuscript-- they will still be around, but no longer mainstream.... not a bad thing IMHO