What about the Other Video?
- 11.14.2008 - 11:06 AMAs the red-and-blue posters start to fade, this bit of Big-Brotherism comes along:
US president-elect Barack Obama is to make the first YouTube address to the nation on Saturday, recording a talk not just on radio but also on video, a spokesman said Friday.
“President-elect Obama will record the Weekly Democratic Radio Address on video and radio,” spokesman Nick Shapiro said.
“The address will be turned into a YouTube video which we will post on www.change.gov,” the official website of the Obama transition team, he said.
“No president-elect or president has ever turned the radio address into a multi-media opportunity before,” Shapiro added.
An opportunity for whom? And for what? For President Obama to recreate himself on every last surface and sound wave that hasn’t yet been “changed” in his image? Or an opportunity for the rest of us to marvel at the planet’s last, best hope?
Here’s the Orwellian cherry on top:
“This is just one of many ways that president-elect Obama will communicate directly with the American people and make the White House and the political process more transparent,” [Shapiro] said.
Transparent? The intentions and inclinations of Obama are so deeply shrouded in contradictions, denials, and feints that his supporters had no choice but to try and turn this cryptic indecipherability into a selling point. Here’s the New York Times:
Even some of Mr. Obama’s friends call him unusually opaque. After hashing out a question with him, “you may come away thinking, ‘Wow, he agrees with me,’ ” said Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Columbia and a former adviser to Palestinian diplomatic delegations. “But later, when you get home and think about it, you are not sure.”
None of us are quite sure how he feels about you, Mr. Khalidi. Maybe if Nick Shapiro forwards the “transparent” memo over to the Los Angeles Times, they’d be kind enough to give us a “a multi-media opportunity” to find out. But for now, our own government will issue weekly Youtube installments of the Obama Show, to run on every computer screen in the land. While the one video everyone actually wants to see remains under the lock and key of a corporation claiming to be part of America’s free press, and obligated to deliver truth to American citizens.
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November 14th, 2008 at 11:27 AM
The fact that Bush and the Bushies didn’t think of this is sort of like if FDR and the New Deals didn’t think of doing radio.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:29 AM
The press is not obliged to tell the truth. It is free to lie, short of outright libel. And, as befits a nation evermore inundated with lawyers, we may well enjoy an increasingly adversarial brand of opinion-qua-reportage. Each side will deliver its zealous slant, and it’ll be up to the reader qua “judge”/”juror” to to believe what he or she chooses. Was it ever truly otherwise?
November 14th, 2008 at 11:42 AM
We need our own Radio Marti from some underground bunker or maybe a Radio Free America.
November 14th, 2008 at 11:50 AM
Obama’s President-elect. He’s going to use new media as well as old to spread his message. What else did you expect?
As for Khalidi, there may be 12 people who want to see the video. Some of us are more concerned with the views of Rahm (”My Dad was an Irgun terrorist”) Israel Emmanuel. Which do you think is likely to be more influential?
November 14th, 2008 at 11:55 AM
“As for Khalidi, there may be 12 people who want to see the video.”
That’s about 11 more than the number who gives a sh*t about what Rahm Emanuel’s father was doing in the 1940s.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:03 PM
If there is one thing that does not bother me about Obama and that I do not find in the least objectionable, and that seems petty griping, it is his offer of a YouTube version of a radio address.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:16 PM
I don’t have a beef with Obama doing YouTube, either… But his flack’s declaration that it is all part of making “the White House and the political process more transparent” *Is* a rather pristine example of Newspeak.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:26 PM
What I would like to see from 0bama is something he has given us very little of - honesty.
He told numerous lies about his background, and the MSM never challenged him on them. Since the majority of people in this country get their news from the MSM, many of the don’t even realize there are issues to be clarified. And then the MSM tells us that these issues are not significant, that only right-wing nutcases care about them (You know, domestic terrorists, foreign terrorists, anti-American racists, anti-Israeli racists, etc.).
The problem with the youtube video will be the same as the problem with 0bama in general - it is all form over function (i.e., 0bama is an empty suit, but he makes a good presentation, especially if it is from a teleprompter).
November 14th, 2008 at 12:30 PM
# 5
“That’s about 11 more than the number who gives a sh*t about what Rahm Emanuel’s father was doing in the 1940s.”
It’s only significant because the son may share the father’s views or ties.. The views and affiliations of the chief of staff are more significant than some dinner for a Palestinian professsor.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:38 PM
When do the Two Minutes Hates begin?