Now that the Obamas really are lame ducks, their media adorers have turned to assessing their legacy -- even on tangential issues like the arts. A large chunk of the Sunday Arts & Style section of The Washington Post on September 4 was devoted to assessing the Obama arts legacy. While there was some complaining that the president didn't visit the local galleries enough, there was also the typical celebration of the Obamas in popular culture.
None of this quite came full circle and noted that an obsequious media was eternally devoted to presenting the Obamas in the most positive light, that they knew they could count on Hollywood (and Jimmy Fallon and so on) to sell their agenda and raise their approval ratings.
Post reporter Krissah Thompson sounded like she was prematurely sad, as she began:
Will the United States ever again have a president who drops the mic or a first lady who raps about going to college?
Barack and Michelle Obama are arguably more conversant in popular culture than any other couple that has occupied the White House. And in four months, when his presidency comes to a close, they will depart as full-fledged celebrities, embraced by America's two arbiters of cool: Hollywood and hip-hop....
For many, the Obamas’ middle-aged hipness has been a breath of fresh air and smart politics.
See? You get credit for "smart politics" just because the pop-culture movers and shakers were at your feet. Perhaps we should give them credit for casting aside any notion of presidential dignity in choosing forums to sell your program:
The president has given his wife credit for taking chances. Before he sat down with Zach Galifianakis on “Between Two Ferns” to make a pitch for young people to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, the first lady had a push-up contest with Ellen DeGeneres to promote fitness.
“Michelle understood this earlier, because she had fewer resources,” the president said in the New York Times magazine this year. “You have to leverage different platforms because a fireside chat just gets lost in the noise today. People aren’t part of one conversation; they’re part of a million. You’re drawing on where the culture is to get the message out.”
Obama should know: Within hours of the “Between Two Ferns” episode, more than 19,000 people had visited HealthCare.gov. That bit, the president said, drew more young people to sign up for health care than any other pitch.
That's right: The Washington Post is still selling Obamacare as something that worked for young people. Let's not ruin the gauzy memories with the present reality.
Post movie critic Ann Hornaday looked ahed to the "cinematic mythmaking" of Barack Obama to come:
For someone whose motto is “No drama Obama,” the president’s personal story and political rise have proven to be exceptionally dramatic, almost inherently cinematic: the challenging childhood as the biracial son of a single mother; the “lost” years as an unfocused young adult; the swift, self-assured ascendancy from community organizer to charismatic politician to president of the United States.
We all secretly feel like our lives feel like a movie. But Barack Obama’s actually looks like one, from its narrative sweep and aspirational ambitions to its impossibly stylish, camera-ready optics. That’s the unstated subtext of “Southside With You,” which Richard Tanne was inspired to write when he watched Barack and Michelle Obama on the campaign trail in 2008. “I was just really taken with them as a couple,” the filmmaker explained during a visit to Washington in early August. “The way they look at each other, the way they flirt with each other — it felt authentic, it felt vibrant and a little sexy.”
Tanne could be speaking for any number of Americans who, regardless of partisan predisposition, have been impressed, even mesmerized, by the sheer iconography of the Obama presidency. It’s impossible to deny the symbolic power, not just of the first black president, but the first black family to live in the White House — which they have occupied with the same grace and shrewdness as they’ve performed their public roles. Like Frederick Douglass and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. before them, the Obamas came to their roles with the innate understanding that images are a way of claiming social space, that representation isn’t a function of checking boxes (or even checking your privilege), but of psychic self-care and basic cultural competence.
White-dude culture is on the defensive, and "black bodies" are gaining respect:
White-dude culture as dominant culture is no longer the default equation, at least not without fierce argument or, even better, scathing satirical ridicule....Hollywood’s addiction to normative whiteness looks particularly pathetic compared with the visual and symbolic narrative that we’ve all watched unspool over the Obama presidency. After decades of Hollywood erasing, distorting and degrading black bodies in the name of entertainment and self-serving uplift, the lens has finally widened with a new sense of urgency and agency.
