There’s a certain reportorial status that comes with interviewing President Obama. Your peers look up to you. They take you seriously. You get to go on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and blow smoke up the President’s ass.
Talk about embarrassing.
“[President Obama] is a very, very smart guy,” Vox‘ editor-in-chief Ezra Klein gushed to Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski Monday morning in light of his extensive “conversation” with Obama in late January. His executive editor Matthew Yglesias had a separate “conversation” with Obama.
Please note: These guys don’t do interviews these days. They have conversations.
In what scenario does a publication have two reporters conducting independent interviews?
As Ezra’s “conversation” with the President moves along, the two men gaze adoringly at each other. Obama is so relaxed he wears an expression more suitable for a day at the beach than a tense news interview. Obama plays the part of professor. Ezra is the pupil who should’ve been wearing a bib for this informercial. With the camera zoning in on Obama’s various body parts, it’s a wonder why there are no closeups of his crotch. And just a style critique, but why is the Vox editor man-spreading in front of the leader of the free world?
All those petty details aside, Klein has long been a Democratic activist. Back in his WaPo days in late 2011, he met with Senate Democratic chiefs of staff and briefed them about a Supercommittee. That’s right. Briefed them. Like an aide. Not a reporter. [RELATED: WaPo’s Ezra Should Have De-Kleined]
Watch the expertly produced interview between Obama and Klein and you see a President who is kicking back — which is something you really don’t want to see in an ordinary news interview. Why worry? It’s Ezra. It’s Yglesias. They’re on his team. What’s to fear?
Indeed, nothing.
The video is so fawning that Obama practically has fairy dust coming out of his fingers. Due to sophisticated graphics, they have Ezra’s beloved charts along with little yellow cubes that periodically fly out of Obama’s long, elegant fingers like little pieces of Nicorette.
Real cigarettes probably wouldn’t be so becoming.
It’s a production after all.