‘Between Two Ferns’ is right where the youth live
When it comes to today’s young adults, it’s much easier to spread the word on their own turf, and most of the time that turf is in pop culture and entertainment, increasingly known as their bastard baby, infotainment.
Is it any wonder President Obama enlisted the help of Zach Galifianakis to push the Affordable Care Act in its final days of enrollment, or used a screening of the new big-budget Cesar Chavez biopic to reignite talk on immigration reform, federal minimum wage hikes or income inequality?
First Lady Michelle Obama has been a reoccurring guest on the late-night, midday and early-morning talk show circuit since the Obama administration entered the White House in hopes of furthering the cause of her obesity-prevention programs for children.
It’s smart outreach that targets where people are listening and engaging.
The FLOTUS was aiming for where the moms and dads are hanging out, which is with the ladies of “The Chew” or “The View,” and Conan, Kimmel and Fallon.
The POTUS is aiming for even younger demographics in hopes of reaching and recruiting them directly (ACA) and to get their help in exerting bloc influence through pushing up on their representatives (the Chavez movie).
Obama has been excoriated in recent weeks for his appearance on the Funny or Die Web site’s buzz worthy series, “Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis.”
Methods such as this are unconventional, smack as pandering and it most definitely wasn’t comfortable for members of traditional print, television and radio media who felt bypassed.
Traditional media and pundits pitched a fit. Members of the White House Press Corps whined about being relegated to back of the old folks’ bus, while partisan media outlets have gotten righteously indignant over some perceived loss of dignity of the office for stooping to the level of comedy to deliver a message.
They’re all just sore because the president is smarter in 21st century message delivery then my fellow lumbering dinosaurs in traditional media, many of whom are already stuck in the tar pit of their own irrelevancy.
The health and future of Obama’s legacy legislation on health care depends on young people signing up. It is young people, with their dues paid and their bodies healthy, who will mean the financial success of the ACA. But he’s not reaching them like he thought he would.
Enter Galifianakis. His is the demographic Obama is looking for; they are young, healthy, virile and ready to take the message viral in a way no newspaper, television newscast, press conference or fireside chat ever could.
It’s a gamble, and no one will really know if it paid off until after March 31, when registration for Obamacare closes down for the year.
But it’s a gamble worth taking for anyone in a world where to young people comedians are more trusted truth-tellers than trained journalists. Stephen Colbert and John Stewart are closer to this era’s Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite than a Brian Williams or a Wolf Blitzer.
I work in this field, and even I find it a hard truth to swallow. But it’s been heading this way for years.
President Obama, and former President Bill Clinton before him, have been pegged as beneficiaries of the Hollywood liberal elite forever and a day. That might be true from a political standpoint, but it also clear that Hollywood — movies and popular music, the actors and the musicians themselves — have been the bee-line needed for every politician and special-interest group looking to grab the attention of the “kids.”
And today those kids are reading “listicles” on Buzzfeed, not articles in the New York Times. They’re subscribing to weekly updates of “Epic Mealtime” on YouTube, rather than subscribing to traditional print publications or online news content.
It’s definitely not a good thing for the higher brain function of young people; it prepares them for nothing and to care for nothing of substance beyond trivialities or news delivered, at best, with biting sarcasm and, at worst, nasty snark. “The Daily Show” is awesome if taken with a daily dose of more in depth analysis or reporting.
In a lot of ways the razzing that President Obama is getting over these strategic decisions to speak to the people he needs most on their home courts is justified. Yet he is merely responding to the only way that group will listen on a mass scale, and that is both smart and savvy. That’s more of an indictment on society than it is on the president.
This column first appeared in the Imperial Valley Press, March 21, 2014.