David Carr on the "Obama Reality Show"

This NYT piece pulls no punches. My fave excerpts follow.

One of the downsides of having a president who is also Celebrity in Chief is that it creates the impression that the leader of the free world is part of a milieu that is more TMZ than C-SPAN. In an effort to remain connected to the social media world that was so much a part of his electoral victory, the Obama administration may be guilty of a very contemporary common offense: Oversharing.
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The president can’t be blamed for a few knuckleheads trying to game their way into his presence, but his shared love of the camera leaves him vulnerable to suggestions that he is too busy appearing as the president and not busy enough being one. And we all know that television shows — reality or otherwise — can jump the shark.

So the Big O's falling approval ratings could be related to standard media ratings, i.e., everyone is sick of his show.

Compare that to Mr. Obama’s outing to Five Guys, where he is filmed taking burger orders from staff members — “You want fries?” — and then sets off with Mr. Williams in the limo, sitting with jacket off and feet up on the seats.

I like that the current president gets out of the bubble, that he enjoys a burger, and is willing to walk back into the White House with a greasy go-bag for the staff. I’m not sure being able to watch it all unfold is good for his presidency.

“When he ran, the Obamas were pitched as kind of a reality show to the public. We’d hear about his dinners with Michelle and we felt like we knew them,” said Michael Hirschorn, a former executive at VH1 who now runs Ish Entertainment, which produces reality programming. “But now that he is in office, there is a danger of the mystique going away. The problem with social media and constant video is that it flows like water and reduces everything to the same level. Not much of it is special, and it all becomes content, even if it’s the president.”

Yeah, well I'm not a TV producer or anything, but I think what the TV-consuming public wants to see now is a big fight with Michelle Obama screaming at the Prezz, stuff like "I own you, mother-f___er!! You wouldn't be here without me!" That might help jack up the ratings again. Let Michelle be Michelle, I say. Let it all hang out. They could call it The Obamas: Reloaded.


Carr concludes by a brief contrast with Jackie Kennedy's White House tour. It's just long enough to make his point; any longer and he'd risk damaging Michelle in the comparison.

Mrs. Kennedy may have been impossibly glamorous and done her share of image management, but she had a chaste relationship with the camera and the public.

“I want to live my life, not record it,” she said.

In other words, Jackie had some class. Nuff said.



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