The Glade 4.0

So I started watching The World Wars today and Obama did a nice intro for it. Then it occurred to me that he does a lot of these things. Off the top of my head I know he did a Mythbusters episode intro (redoing Archimedes Death Ray) and Cosmos on Fox. Did Bush and/or Clinton do a lot of this stuff too?

_________________

Bush didn't. I don't remember if Clinton did, but even if he did, it wasn't as much. Reagan didn't, he just had on-camera sitdowns to actually talk about policy with the public.

But Obama's a cult of personality, so it kind of necessitates he get his face out on the media this way so he can be duly worshipped and liked for being a black man we historically elected.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I think the most Clinton did was appear on some mtv "rock the vote" special where he sat down and took questions from a panel. Maybe played his sax.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

*sigh* You're smarter than this, Kaffis.


Not while in office, no. A quick Google shows that Bush did do a remote camera appearance on Deal or No Deal, and of course we got all those cutesy/humorous videos of Bush's dog (sometimes co-starring the President, sometimes not), but I think their pop-media appearances were mostly as candidates. It's just the next step in the increasing media exposure trend, though. I mean, Jesus, we now have an official White House Twitter feed. On the one hand, I'm not really a fan of it (other than the dog videos, I confess) - they have deadly serious jobs, and it strikes me as a little demeaning to the office, even when it's just candidates for that office doing it. On the other hand, it's just the Media Age equivalent of ribbon cutting ceremonies, riding/marching in parades, eating at local diners (surrounded by cameras), touring job sites in a hard hat (surrounded by cameras), etc. - it's a way for elected officials to get out in front of the public and humanize themselves as "one of us" - so it's hard for me to get too bent out of shape about it.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/The_Obama_channel.html

You should probably not dismiss a statement that's easily verifiable.

_________________

Uh...your evidence does not support your conclusion, like, at all.

http://www.mrmediatraining.com/2012/04/ ... lons-show/

tl;dr:
JFK appeared on Jack Paar as a senator
Richard Nixon was on Rowan & Martin's Laugh in in 1968
Ronald Reagan appeared on Tonight Show in 75
Bill Clinton was on Arsenio Hall in 1992
George W. Bush delivered the Top 10 on Letterman in 2000
Sarah Palin appeared on SNL in 2008
Mitt Romney appeared on Leno in 2012

That said, those were all as candidates or potential future candidates at the time.

It doesn't? Barack Obama's campaign ads, rhetoric, and other statements were almost exclusively propaganda. Any statement he delivers about the ACA to the public IS propaganda, particularly when he issues executive orders that indicate he had no intent of honoring the "If you like your plan, you can keep it" promise. And then there was the race-baiting pandemic of his first term in office. Even members of this forum openly accused his opposition of racism for ANY criticism, both during his campaign and after the inauguration. In point of fact, Barack Obama's handlers had the audacity to create the Office of the President Elect before he assumed office and very liberally interpreted the GSA's responsibility in transitioning from the Shrub.

The Obama Channel was just the start, but his entire presidency was contingent upon creating a cult of personality and defeating his opposition through non-substantive rhetoric and social manipulation.

Please, try not to let your affection for the current administration color your perceptions. 4 years of race baiting by the Obama Administration, its handlers, and the media ended that argument. He has his cult of personality, and he's taken great efforts to make sure it's maintained.

And, god forbid I mention George Zimmerman, but the President held a press conference to announce that he had ORDERED the Department of Justice take an extra-legal interest in prosecuting him for the moral crime of shooting a black kid. Think about that, RangerDave ...

_________________

Successful politicians have always cultivated an image of success and used the media to their advantage.

There's a difference between cultivating an image of success and an image of irreproachability. Guess which Obama has done?

_________________

But that's not one of the criteria you used for a cult of personality.

An image of irreproachably, whether or not its true of the Obama administration, has nothing to do with a cult of personality, and more to do with the political atmosphere of the country, such as China or any other of the various flavors of totalitarian regimes.

You can have a cult of personality around a very flawed individual who acknowledges those flaws.

No more so than any other politician's campaign ads, rhetoric or other statements.


Again, nothing worse there than we get from every President trying to sell a major policy initiative. Remember how much Bush and the Republicans emphasized the sunset features of their tax cuts? Think they ever had any intention of letting them expire?


I agree there was a pandemic of race-baiting. I disagree on which direction it came from.


This is very weak tea, and the fact that you cite it is a good indication of how petty and all-encompassing the criticisms and complaints of Obama often are.


Again, how is this different than any other major political figure? You don't think the Republicans' courting of the white, evangelical base or their gung-ho patriotism shtick are about non-substantive rhetoric and social manipulation? You don't think Palin, Reagan and Kennedy had equal or greater "cults of personality"?


Believe it or not, I don't have any great affection for this administration. I think the election of a black man to the Presidency was a huge watershed moment, symbolically speaking, and I think he's done a decent job in office (subject to the minor caveat that I think pretty much the entire leadership of both parties is guilty of war crimes), but that's about it.


There's nothing "extra-legal" about a Justice Department inquiry into a case when there are allegations that the locals aren't doing their job for racially discriminatory reasons. You may disagree with the laws that permit such inquiries, but that doesn't make them "extra-legal".

He claimed at his inauguration that the tides of the seas would change because of him.

I don't see how you can see that as anything else but an egocentric diva playing himself to an adoring legion - a cult of personality.

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

What was the exact quote?

Yeah, I'm sure he did, just like Al Gore said he invented the Internet and Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house, right?

You should have learned by now not to try to do this to me Xeq.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2pZSvq9bto

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Yeah, he's not claiming that he, personally, is going to affect the tides. It's obviously a commentary on global warming and how the oceans will recede if "we are willing to work for it."

Correlation != Causation. You apparently didn't learn this Elmo. He's not stating he's the reason these things change, he's making a statement of purpose, and trying to mark a general change in the political culture; not implying he's the cause.

Yes his inauguration just happens to be the reason that this world changing effect starts.




Ok, hows the kool aid?

_________________
"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

It was his acceptance of the nomination, not the inauguration. But either way, you don't think those are kind of, you know, natural moments to highlight as the beginning of a change in direction? Sure, the energy level and "poetic" factor were a bit much for my more curmudgeonly tastes, but whatever.

When Reagan talked about American renewal, a second American Revolution, history looking back on the period of his administration as "the golden years", etc. at his nomination speeches and inaugural addresses, was he also fostering a cult of personality, or was he just engaging in the same puffery intended to inspire and rally his audience that Obama was engaging in?

No more so than any other politician's campaign ads, rhetoric or other statements.

Actually, they were significantly more so, mainly because he didn't run against his opponent either time. In both cases, he ran against a Bush/Fey ticket that wasn't actually running against him, and managed to convince the public that was what his opponent was. In the first election, it was largely because of Tina Fey's strikling resemblance to Sarah Palin that people started actually attributing SNL comments to Palin herself; in the second one it had a lot to do with the fact that Romney didn't figure out how to campaign until the first debate. Still, Obama had the "campaign against someone I'm not actually running against" thing down to a science.

_________________
"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Well then, I guess it's a good thing Obama really is a socialist, Muslim, terrorist from Kenya who hates America, Christians and white people so the Republicans didn't have to rely on such dirty tricks when running against him. Oh, and of course it was fortunate for the Republicans that John Kerry really was a filthy traitor who lied about his military service in order to aid the Vietnamese communists because he hates America. And then there's Bill Clinton who, of course, was a communist drug kingpin who had people murdered, was conspiring with Janet Reno to take away all our guns and install a UN dictatorship, and who, it goes without saying, hates America.

That is clearly not what he's saying. You're inserting meaning based on your own bias. This may be a bit no-true-Scotsman, but no reasonable listener would take that away from what he was saying.

except she didn't.

_________________
I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

That's the point he's making rorithas. Nor did al gore claim he invented the internet.