‘Between Two Ferns’: Obama goes for cool

last updated 8 January 2015

“‘Tragic,’ ‘gross,’ ‘dreadful,’” said Dean Obeidallah in TheDailyBeast.com. These were just a few of the words “uttered in horror by conservatives” after President Obama appeared last week on comedian Zach Galifianakis’s online faux talk show, Between Two Ferns. The president went on the talk-show parody for a chance to urge young people to sign up for Obamacare, but first had to endure six minutes of Galifianakis’s ironically hostile questions, including a reference to his “home country of Kenya.” Obama gave as good as he got: Asked “What’s it like to be the last black president?” he shot back, “What’s it like for this to be the last time you ever talk to a president?” Obama’s appearance triggered a freak-out on the Right, which said Obama had sullied the dignity of his office. “All I can tell you is Abe Lincoln would not have done it,” spluttered Fox News host Bill O’Reilly.

After Bill Clinton’s sexual escapades, “I don’t fret overly about the dignity of the presidency,” said Jonah Goldberg in NationalReview.com. What does bother me, however, is Obama’s “pathetic” obsession with looking hip. Given his fading popularity, Obama trading deadpan quips with a hipster goofball just “seemed kind of sad.” Maybe you “fuddy-duddy” conservatives just have no sense of humor, said Joan Walsh in Salon.com. Obama was genuinely witty on the show, and his performance was quickly viewed more than 15 million times and led to a surge of visits to HealthCare.gov. Every time Obama shows that a president can be cool and talk to young people on their own terms, aging white conservatives go into an existential panic “over how irrelevant they’re becoming.”

Besides, presidents have been doing “pop culture drop-ins” for decades, said Rem Rieder in USAToday.com, including Richard Nixon’s memorable “Sock it to me” on Laugh-In. But one aspect of this episode is worrisome. Obama hasn’t given an interview to The Washington Post since 2009 and last spoke to a reporter from The New York Times in July. He barely ever takes questions from the White House press corps. So while Obama is perfectly willing to trade quips with Galifianakis and Jon Stewart, he is dodging any journalist equipped to challenge him on critical issues—including his health-care law. That’s neither cool nor funny.