Via Spencer, John McCain was right...
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
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McCain was WRONG. Celebs and journalists are human beings; their dearly love their country too. They too lost millions as a result of the economic massacre of the last eight years. It is painfully dumb when I hear people saying the pool were in the tank for Barack. Hello? Why didn't we hear any complaint that they are in the tank for soldiers in Iraq and Afgan?
I want the pool and celebs demand the best for our country!
They celebs knew Barack was the best thing for our country, just as I knew that he was the best.
Celebs, breathe, eat and sleep like us too. I gave money, time and energy to Barack's campaign without regret because I was tired of PERPETUAL FEAR.
Gotta give it up to John Legend, who worked early and often for the campaign, when others were standing on the sidelines. Thank you!
BTW, what happened to that no-name rapper that endorsed McCain? Let's have a "Where is He Now?" feature on that dude...
the prez has a swagger about him in this setting...He's usually more low-key in political settings but the way he greeted the "hip-hop bourgeoisie" is kind of telling.
Bruce, telling how?
(Sorry if this comes up a double post. My other was caught in moderation and I refuse to think it's ME.)
Hicks,
I think that Bruce is just saying that this is a chance to see Obama a little less constrained by political code-switching. This isn't anything new -- if you saw the clips from his interviews with Sway over at TAPPED before the election, you saw the same thing.
Well maybe i'm overanalyzing it, but the way he chatted with "Queen" and em hinted that it was more than just a politician chatting up his constituents or supporters. The tone, the smoothness, the "what's goin on mayn"...i'm just telling it how i see it. It was more of a familiar , "i'm-back-home" kind of greeting.
Wow -- There's a hidden moment in that video that did what nothing else in Barack Obama's path to the White House has been able to do...Cause me to lose it.
It's early on when John Legend, teasingly, steps back and raises his hands up and says "I have a dream."
You can see the Washington Monument in the background and the throngs of people and all of a sudden, I realized that this is what Martin must have seen. Except that this time it was my generation, my people, my contemporaries, my fellow hip-hop babies on stage holding court, giving the speeches and leading the nation. Except that this time instead of fighting for inclusion, we're celebrating it.
I'll have to write more on this when I get it together, but I think that's going to be awhile.
tWB: Dude, as an unabashed Pres. Obama supporter since I was shamed by my "He Won't Win But Innit Cute He's Running" thinking when he took Iowa, I'm sure I've seen every single thing he's done. You're right; he is less constrained without the necessary PoliSpeak. Just asking and still wondering about what it tells.
tWB...exactly...either that, or the prez is playing me hard...
Tobby, celebs don't have a code of ethics, journalists do and they hold themselves out to be unbiased, non-partisan and balanced. Especially the ones doing the day to day grunt work of covering a campaign.
What is right for the country is determined by the voters, it is the media's obligation to present the two sides, not to decide which one is better. If they want to go into boosterism or opinion journalism, they should be confined to Countdown, Hannity, The Factor, Hardball or the opinion pages instead of writing news articles.
"it is the media's obligation to present the two sides, not to decide which one is better."
It's easy to take this too far. Look at stuff like global warming and creationism in schools. You can't just have an argument where the media reports that one side has reality and science and the other side denies the facts of reality, with equal time given to both since it's a controversy. Sometimes stuff is just objectively wrong, and I'd want the media to point that out, not pretend it's not wrong because 30% of the country believes that. That's what gets illegal spying and everything going wrong in Iraq not reported on; the truth would greatly offend one side.
DougEMI,
I see your point, however, most voters vote based on what they hear from the pool. Example, I knocked few doors in VA and the folks there told me they will not vote for Barack because they hear in the news that he is a socialist--and that he didn't visit the troops while he was away in Germany and Iraq.
You may recall, it was the media too who were telling people how Latinos will never vote for a black man.
More celebrities attended Obama's inauguration and peripheral events than any other presidential inauguration. Not surprising for the first african american president. More celebration, more celebrities, more attendance, more viewers worldwide. And then of course, there's the voice, the suave looks, the words, the message, the man. Yeah, you nailed it McCain.
Tobby, But people who get statements like Obama is a socialist get them largely from opinion journalists, not the pool reporters. If the guy from the Wash. Post went around acting like Joe McCarthy, he would be removed. People thought Bush was going to reinstate the draft in 2005, so people believe all kinds of false things.
Adam, you can take it too far and get into just reporting press releases, but take global warming. Those who believe it is caused by our spewing of carbon have vastly different opinions on that. Some say it is too late to do anything, others say we have 5 years, some say 20. So what is the proper way to cover all that. They all claim to have science on their side but it all has vastly different implications.
DougEMI,
So, you are telling me that folks at Weekly Standard, Washington Times and NRO will report the truth? You said voters should decide the truth. Well, journalists are voters too. They have children going to failing schools too. They saw their shares varnishing like the speed of light. They saw a dumb Ivy league MBA president destroying what they worked for several years. Some of them, have cousins in Iraq fighting a dumb war.
No, I am not saying they will report the truth, what I am saying is that the pool reporters should not be biased, shouldn't pull for certain candidate in their work. If they want that job, they should apply at the DNC and not at the New York Times.
They can vote for whomever they desire in their roles as private citizens, but if they are biased on the job, their credibility is out the door. No one side has a monopoly on the truth, see Orwell's Notes on Nationalism.
As a practical point, I would imagine most of those NY and Washington reporters send their kids to private school.
Celebs on the stage -- via preferred access or $50,000 donations are nothing new -- and it's telling that another edition of an old song has even collected outrage. Bush had his celebs, why can't Obama? I loved seeing the On/Off switch of each celebrity as a non-celeb approached them. And that not many of them conversated with one another!
President Obama is a cool man. Very calm, lots of swag, he got that from Chicago!
And isn't there some distinction that can be made between musicians, & "celebrities"? creative people who are famous for creating moments of popular expressive culture in a medium where Africans Americans have made a tremendous worldwide impact, where they found a voice that was denied elsewhere and worked that voice through minstrelsy and exploitation to redefine those popular mediums around the whole idea of the value of expressly unfettered black voices? surely that's more than celebrity,a nd surely that has something to do with why those people are on that stage.
Urk is right, there is a distinction between artists and "celebrities" which really connotes someone like Paris Hilton, or is just uses as a way to demean people like Brad Pitt who has been nominated for two Oscars for his acting.
I mean, who depends on celebrity more than a politician? George Bush would have never, ever had a chance to be president if it weren't for the celebrity inherent in his name. And John McCain is practically the epitome of the celebrity politician, the man goes on Leno more than The Governator.
And I don't see anything wrong with that. It's a politician's job to be popular. Otherwise you couldn't win elections.
The whole "Obama is a the world's biggest celebrity" was meant to be demeaning, but was also a self-fulfilling prophesy in the sense that now he pretty much is the most famous person in the world I would guess...
Obama speaks to them with the ease that come from familiarity. Like old friends. Like family.
Not only is Barack intelligent, he is the coolest President we ever had.
Heh.
EW picked up on Mr. President referencing the Beyonce/Justin Timberlake "Single Ladies" parody from SNL a few months back.
http://popwatch.ew.com/popwatch/2009/01/obama-beyonce-j.html
He really is the first pop culture President we've had since Kennedy (Clinton blowing sax on Arsenio does NOT count.)
"Celebs on the stage -- via preferred access or $50,000 donations are nothing new"
I think they're all/mostly the performers who appeared at various official high-profile events such as the concert on Sunday before the inauguration. It's not surprising that they would get good seats for the inaugural. Especially if they performed for free.
Also, they aren't just rap/R&B performers. I saw milquetoast Josh Groban in there, and either James Taylor or Geddy Lee.
Sheesh--Ronald Reagan was a movie star for God's sake, and the Governator an even bigger movie star. Of course Clinton was a celebrity, in the rock and roll star mode replete with groupies. Obama makes use of all that on one hand, but on the other his invitation to the common person diffuses the ridiculous idolitry of our celebrity culture. McCain's campaign believed more in the power of celebrity by a mile, which is why he was so frightened of Obama's popularity and why the wrinkly old dude practically invited a talentless, often clueless Paris Hilton to refer to both Obama and him, the two prospectively most powerful people in the world, as "bitches." Yoyo Ma is widely considered the world's greatest living musician--he was there too.
I never expected this to happen, even as I got older and older:
The President is hipper than I am.
It's good and it's not so good.
My gawd, who'd need to be paid to attend something like this? Mariah Carey diva-ness aside, it sounds like they were excited just to be able to stand there, much less have a co-starring/performing role in the proceedings.
And the nice thing is that they seemed equally wowed with the audience as they were with the O-man himself.
I love his greeting to Mary J. Much love and respect to her. :) I felt like weeping over her performance of "Lean on Me".
Somehow the thing that gets me about this little video is when he's all, "Hey Queen!" There's something so totally, inconceivably, over-the-top American about this moment...he's the President, but she's still the Queen, a title a regular NYC kid bestowed on herself...I'm expressing badly, here, but it's something to do with the true nature of regality...
"I never expected this to happen, even as I got older and older:
The President is hipper than I am.
It's good and it's not so good."
I'm 27, and it took a third viewing for me to realize what he was referring to when he started waving his hand in reference to "Single Ladies" -- I'm trying to process the fact that the POTUS knows this song.
BUT, where was Common??? I would rather he be the prince of the hour rather than Hova.
For the benefit of the old and unhip, could someone identify who the celebrities are in this video?
"it is the media's obligation to present the two sides, not to decide which one is better."
It is the media's obligation to present ALL sides within a spectrum of rational opinon but also help voters evaluate the quality of that opinion. Providing context and analysis, in fact, is as much the mission and responsibility of "journalistic objectivity" as not simply taking sides on ideological or partisan grounds. Rush Limbaugh sounding off on the stimulus isn't "balance" to Paul Krugman, just as Cynthia McKinney spouting her views on Israel isn't "balance" to, say, the editorial insights of Haaretz.
3 years ago, I stood on those steps at the Lincoln Memorial, and noticed the granite tile where MLK gave his speech from. I stood there and and looked out to the Washington memorial. That was an inspirational/emotional moment for me. I didn't know this celebration would happen 3 yrs later.
http://www.thedctraveler.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/lincoln-memorial-mlk-i-have-a-dream-location-thumb.jpg
Gruntled, I'm not sure who's doing the camera work, but the one hopping around like a 12-year-old and "introducing" everything is John Legend, R&B singer. Next to him in the pretty embroidered jacket is Beyonce [Knowles], the one who they're telling to "sing, we'll back you up, B." The one Obama addresses as "Queen" is Queen Latifah, actress, sometime singer [but, for me, always a pioneering female rap artist from the 80s]. The one who get's complimented on her all-white outfit is Mary J. Blige, de facto queen of hip-hop soul [gotta love it that she can sing on stage absolutely alone, no backup dancers, and still be the most compelling person to watch in comparison to other performers]. Then it's Josh Groban, who get's complimented on his beautiful voice, and the probably Tom Hanks and [what looks like] Denzel Washington in sunglasses. There are a buncha people in between I don't recognize.
This is so beautiful! Thank you. I cried and cried. (Not that it matters, but I'm a 62-year old white man.)
Yes we can!
Just guessing but I bet JFK was a little different with Sinatra as was Reagan with Sinatra and Lew Wasserman or Clinton with all of Hollywood. This has ever been thus. Its just nice to see the ego stripped like bark from these celebrity redwoods and for a really good reason.