Present society is obsessed with entertainment. If it isn’t a pleasant experience people tend to reject it.
I think if our politicians would return to a more dignified style we’d have more people treating our serious issues in a problem-solving mode rather than as an emotional free-for-all.
No, I don’t want my political figures serving as pop stars.
I think it more appropriate for Obama to appear on *The Daily Show *than on The View. WTF was up with that?
Two benefits to making the interview the full half hour.
Well, the POTUS does give a weekly radio address, doesn’t he?
If I were him I would trust the Secret Service – checking the water must be a basic standard item on their checklist.
I’m older than that demographic and I believe it’s the most legitimate news show on television.
Yes, traditional political news programs are a sham.
Who the hell listens to the radio? Seriously, what audience would there be, other than die-hard politicos, for a radio address? Video media are what people want, and seeing someone’s face and body language when he’s speaking to you is important. Prime time, on all three major networks and Fox, would be the ticket.
The SS has many other concerns other than a mug of water sitting on the desk. Unless they assigned somebody to pour the water from a sealed bottle they brought with them, and then stand guard on it, he’s right not to drink from it. Besides, it wouldn’t do for the prez to have a misstep and dump water all down his front.
Well, since you’re so hip with what the kids want these days, surely you know the President does weekly YouTube addresses? Modern day Fireside Chats, they are.
Granted, it’s not interrupting everybody’s favorite episode of TV or anything like you’re suggesting, but the President is rather accessible.
Two sides of the same coin?
I caught the highlights on PBS news hour. It was painful to watch.
Hip? Who said I was hip? Not me, and I said nothing about ‘what kids want’. And I’m completely unaware of any YouTube videos, as I visit the site infrequently. It would seem that those would be directed at younger audiences, who are generally on his side anyway. He should also be targeting those who are not Internet junkies: middle-aged and older, who do most of the bitching about things.
Frankly, I wouldn’t even know what station to hear his address on. Would that be something they air on NPR or any other news stations? What time does it even come on?
Big deal today. He called the president “dude”. CNN is all over it as a crisis.
Quite. That’s not how you’re supposed to address royalty.
I thought that was impolite and disrespectful, but I think he realized it immediately. Obama has a very relaxed manner about him that encourages familiarity, but JS shouldn’t have forgotten to whom he was speaking.
I think the “dude” think was an artifact of verbal habit, and not intentional. He said something like, “You can’t say ‘heckuvajob’ any more, dude,”(or something to that effect) where the “dude” was one of those verbal tics that people get locked into. I think it was just something that popped out as part of his natural speech habits and wasn’t something consciously intended. It semed to me like Stewart himself even realized he had (I guess for lack of a better word, accidentally) called the President of the United States, “dude,” and got kind of a “whoops” look on his face.
It’s not a big deal. No disrespect was intended, and he’s probably not the first person to trip over his tongue while talking to a POTUS.
I thought this was a bang-up interview. Stewart asked some really tough questions, putting Obama back on his heels immediately, but Obama didn’t shy away: he faced the questions head on, for the most part.
I thought his explanation of how the passed HCR wasn’t ever going to be a complete, new, different system than what we previously had, but was instead, at the very least, a framework to build on, was very good, in particular.
I also thought the “dude” comment was awesome. If I ever meet the President, any President, I’d talk to him like I’d talk to anyone else, too. Yes, he’s the President, but that doesn’t mean he’s somehow non-human. There’s nothing disrespectful about “dude”, IMO. It’s not like he said “you might not want to use that phrase, fuckface”; that would be disrespectful.
All in all, I thought it was a good, solid interview, and I think Jon Stewart should be proud of it. Obama should too.
Oh good, so it’s not just me that doesn’t see calling the President dude as disrespectful.
We’re supposed to be an egalitarian society, dangit. The Pres isn’t royalty, he’s a guy doing a job.
I wouldn’t exactly say they’re a sham, they just so utterly stale and predictable.
I think of it as Gettysburg Syndrome. It’s one thing to use a phrase like “…testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure” when you’re dedicating a cemetery for thousands of war dead. Politicians today use phrases like that when they talk about extending the mortgage interest deduction in the income tax. Political debates have time limts on the answers; when was the last time you saw someone not use all of it?
So yes, please, let’s get more politicians onto shows like this, where they have to be unscripted and informal.
I think it’s an artifact of Stewart being a comedian. There’s more than one way to tell a joke, but “George Bush said ‘heckuva job’ about Michael Brown” ain’t gonna cut it. You have to approach the punch line from an angle so it doesn’t see you coming.
And I don’t think it’s disrespectful to talk to the president as though he’s a human being.
I thought this was a pretty good interview, some legitimate probing questions that related to issues Stewart has highlighted in the past and you wouldn’t see asked alsewhere. For his part Obama gave some good answers, though I fear the ‘Yes we can, but…’ may haunt him.
You guys should seriously get Jeremy Paxman over there for your next round of election-tainment though. I’d love to see him interview Palin, I think she’d leave in tears 
Now that is a great idea.
I thought it was an excellent interview - Stewart is not, and has never pretended to be, a full-on investigative journalist and I’ve never seen him take an antagonistic or challenging tone in questioning a guest of any political ilk.* In serious interviews he has always been respectful while still asking probing questions. The vibe I got was that Stewart was sympathetic to what Obama was purportedly trying to achieve but was trying to make him account for his failure to do some of the things he had promised. These are the sort of questions I wish more journalists would ask.
As for the mug thing, I’m not sure why this is a big deal but my take on it was that Obama liked the mug but made the face and set it aside after Stewart filled it from water from Stewart’s own mug (with the implication that Stewart had previously been drinking from it) - Obama was essentially saying “eww”. It was a bit of mild comedy, not an indication of assumed superiority from the President.
*In contrast there is an (apocryphal) story about the aforementioned Jeremy Paxman that he always conducts interviews with politicians with the attitude of “Why is this lying bastard lying to me?”. UK MPs are used to having to hold their own in the adversarial environment of Parliament, especially the Prime Minister, and can usually handle interviews and questions from an audience without too much trouble. US politicians, used to saying whatever they want with little challenge, would run a mile from Paxman.