August 13, 2009 – 2:33 pm
Sorry, that should read “White House unleashes viral email,” according to Jake Tapper at ABC News. The email, from Obama political adviser David Axelrove — er, Axelrod — is meant to combat those other viral emails, which contain false information about health reform and manage to spread like wildfire. It’s a smart strategy by the White […]
August 13, 2009 – 2:15 pm
Mike Allen in today’s Politico: “A new coalition this morning is launching $12 million in TV ads to support President Obama’s health-reform plan, in the opening wave of a planned tens of millions of dollars this fall. The new group, funded largely by PhRMA, is called Americans for Stable Quality Care. It includes some odd […]
August 12, 2009 – 3:32 pm
Well, well, well. Just days after Time gave us the 411 on President Obama’s golf game — and let us know it’s a solid indicator of the overall quality of his presidency — we find out that, uh-oh, golf ain’t so cool anymore. At least among the global socialist elite. The New York Times reports that Venezuelan […]
August 12, 2009 – 12:59 pm
Since it’s the middle of August and we’re just phoning it in, here’s an interesting take on the current health-care debate (and protests) from someecards.com:
August 11, 2009 – 4:34 pm
Politico has some videos it describes as “Pundits on town hall tempers.” After seeing this Brady Bunch-style image teasing the clips, I took some Pepto Bismal and clicked over here.
August 10, 2009 – 10:52 am
Yahoo! teased a Time magazine article on President Obama’s golf game with the headline, “What Obama’s golf game reveals about the way he governs.” Because I’m so ga-ga over the president, I just had to know. The answer? He’s everything we could ever hope for. Natch. According to Time’s Michael Scherer, “Presidents, like normal people, […]
August 8, 2009 – 11:01 am
Two quick health care nuggets today. First, Sarah Palin writing about the Obama plan on her Facebook account (that’s what happens when you leave the governor’s mansion): [W]ho will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in […]
Hints on humor, from my West Wing colleague Julia Lam: The Washington Post is shuttering “Mouthpiece Theater,” Howard Kurtz recently announced. In this past week, the satirical video series featuring Dana Milbank and Chris Cillizza drew criticism over an indecorous Hillary Clinton joke. In retrospect, Cillizza said, “name-calling is never the stuff of good comedy.” […]
I’m glad Vinca broke the profanity barrier on Podium Pundits yesterday – and did it with such humor and class. I agree that “judicious” use of profanity can have “a positive, constructive effect” on a tense situation. For instance, when driving through Washington at rush hour, or when WordPress screws up all your formatting just […]
August 7, 2009 – 11:21 am
Shepard Fairey, the “street artist” who designed those iconic red and blue Obama posters during the campaign, is back with another portrait of Mr. Obama for the August 20th issue of Rolling Stone. As the New York Daily News reports, “the portrait [pictured here] depicts Obama with a brow knit in determination, surrounded by a […]
A minor scandal erupted in the UK last week when aspiring Tory prime minister David Cameron used some obscenities in a “jokey, blokey” radio interview. Worse than the vulgarity, for which Cameron immediately apologized, some critics suspected a calculated ploy — that he got “sweary,” as one blogger put it, to boost his cool-factor with […]
August 6, 2009 – 11:02 am
Senator Barack Obama, June 3, 2008: I am absolutely certain that, generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment … when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. Bloomberg, August 6, 2009: Hurricane Outlook in Atlantic Cut […]
August 5, 2009 – 10:43 am
Sen. Max Baucus, after leaving lunch with the president yesterday, had this to say to Roll Call. “It was a, really, a wonderful meeting, led by a terrific man, our president, Barack Obama. And one of the Senators was saying to me as we walked out, ‘You know, it’s just so wonderful to hear him […]
Jennifer Senior’s New York magazine article analyzing President Obama’s ubiquitous media presence contains one superb observation: Rahm Emanuel is, she says, “so profane he’d embarrass a toilet.” But as I read Senior’s depiction of a White House fully comfortable using every communications method available, I found myself wondering to what end. The president’s poll numbers have […]
I’ve asked here in much earlier posts if President Obama is grossly overexposed. Contrary to the Reagan Method, Obama seems to be always “stepping on his message.” In the days of the Great Communicator, the administration always had one clear message of the day or the week, reinforced by Michael Deaver’s imagery and the speechwriters […]
