{"id":173,"date":"2009-03-20T17:39:10","date_gmt":"2009-03-20T23:39:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sebersole.wordpress.com\/?p=173"},"modified":"2009-03-20T17:39:10","modified_gmt":"2009-03-20T23:39:10","slug":"late-night-with-prez-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/late-night-with-prez-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Late Night with Prez Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"NUP_134498_0162\"Last night President Obama made history when he became the first sitting president to appear on the Tonight Show. While Washington D.C. was embroiled in the AIG bonus scandal, our Chief Executive was discussing policy, and his bowling score, with Jay Leno in Hollywood, CA.\u00a0 Something about it all seemed slightly unseemly and a little bit strange… as though the leader of the free world was seeking the kind of exposure that late-night TV hosts typically provide to comedians and film stars. Usually “the press” travels to DC and the White House to interview the president. There’s a certain seriousness demanded by the office and the oval office that bestows a sense of gravity to the whole affair…a gravity that is sorely lacking on late-night TV.<\/p>\n

Some have argued that this is just the sort of relief that the American public needs when the economic hardship and the resulting rancorous debate in Washington has us all feeling slightly under the weather.\u00a0 According to this line of thinking,\u00a0 a little levity from the chief executive might provide some relief from our misery. But I suspect that Neil Postman might see it differently. Postman was a media theorist, and author of Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business<\/em>. According to Postman, television is wholly unsuited for serious discourse and trivializes the most important of issues. Postman would not have been surprised that an American president would appear on a late-night comedy show. In fact, he would probably conclude that this was the inevitable outcome of a society preoccupied with entertainment and enraptured with celebrity. In his book Postman provides a short history of politicians intentionally presenting themselves as sources of amusement. JFK allowing the camera crew of Ed Murrow into his home, former President Richard Nixon appearing on Laugh In<\/em>, former President Gerald Ford and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger taking brief roles on Dynasty, <\/em>Tip O’Neill showing up on the sitcom Cheers<\/em>, and Mayor Ed Koch hosting Saturday Night Live<\/em>…these and other examples demonstrate that political celebrity is nothing new. President Obama’s actions simply take it to a new level.<\/p>\n

And what is the result?\u00a0 Postman concluded that, “Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.” I wish he were wrong.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night President Obama made history when he became the first sitting president to appear on the Tonight Show. While Washington D.C. was embroiled in the AIG bonus scandal, our Chief Executive was discussing policy, and his bowling score, with Jay Leno in Hollywood, CA.\u00a0 Something about it all seemed slightly unseemly and a little … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Late Night with Prez Obama”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,14,18,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","category-media-industry","category-politics","category-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=173"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ebersolemedia.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}