The video: President Obama made a buzzy appearance on the NBC talk show Late Night with Jimmy Fallon Tuesday night, chatting with the host on location at UNC-Chapel Hill. The two discussed the Secret Service prostitution scandal (Obama called the offending agents "knuckleheads"), the president's pop culture tastes (he digs the Comedy Central show Key and Peele), and student loan reform, which set up the show's unlikely highlight. Obama joined the late-night funnyman for a rendition of Fallon's popular bit, "Slow Jam the News," in which the president spoke over cool, Barry White-esque accompaniment from The Roots. (Watch the video below.) "Now is not the time to make school more expensive for our young people" Obama intoned. "Ohhh yeah," Fallon chimed in. "You should listen to the president, or as I call him, the preezie of the United Steezie." Predictably, the young crowd roared.
The reaction: Barack Obama is certainly "going after the hip vote," says Ben Feller of the Associated Press. And this "may be the shrewdest, most effective TV campaign stop before a Gen X, Y, or Z audience since Bill Clinton blew his sax," says Verne Gay at Newsday. It deftly blended entertainment with serious issues, and showed off the president's appealing sense of humor. And the unspoken contrast is unmistakable, says James Hohmann at Politico. "It is impossible to imagine Mitt Romney ever, ever, ever doing anything like this." Maybe that's why this clip will almost certainly "go more viral than most ads that politicians pay a lot of money for," says Meghan Keane at Crushable. See for yourself:
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