Barack Obama appeared on Funny or Die’s Between Two Ferns on Tuesday, making it arguably the weirdest show in history to get presidential attention.
Between Two Ferns is a sort of mock-public access channel show hosted by Zach Galifianakis. It looks like public access, too, with very little decoration outside of a plain black backdrop, two stools and, of course, two ferns. Galifianakis is a master of the art of awkwardness, making an array of famousguests squirm on said stools with excessively long silences, probing questions, and generally bizarre behavior.
None of that was missing from Obama’s appearance. But it wasn’t like most appearances on the show, either:
Usually, Galifianakis is the one making his guests feel incredibly uncomfortable (“I just have never interviewed a 7-year-old before,” he told Justin Bieber when the young star appeared on the show), but that dynamic was mostly flipped with Obama. Yes, Galifianakis did stumble over Obama’s name in the way he does for most guests (‘Bieber’ became ‘Beevers’), but almost immediately Obama was the one making Galifianakis feel awkward. “If I ran a third time, it’d be sort of like doing a third Hangover movie,” Obama dug. “It didn’t really work out very well, did it?”
Obama took a risk going on a show as weird as Between Two Ferns; it could have made him look weird and awkward and bumbling. But he hacked it, flipping that dynamic back around on his host. This also made it easy for Obama, who is clearly trying to enroll the youth stoner demographic though his signature health care law, to make his plug for Healthcare.gov. Yes, the plug did seem canned and forced, but it worked, because Obama was the one dominating the scene and calling the shots.
Obama’s presidency has overlapped with the rise of the meme, and both he and Michelle have taken advantage of this. They have both made frequent appearances on late night shows (Obama is one of the politicians who’s slow jammed the news), and his administration is responsible for the pajama boy meme and the McKayla Maroney ‘not impressed’ face picture. Obama even embraced the existing meme of his ‘Not Bad’ face during a Reddit “ask me anything.”
Not every president would be able to pull off this kind of an appearance, but it’s good Obama is adding it into the presidential repertoire of public relations. It shows that, with some thought, public officials can penetrate even the weirdest parts of the internet.
This year’s CPAC convention offered plenty of material for Jon Stewart to dig into, and throw some shade upon, from Paul Ryan’s dubious “brown bag” anecdote to Wayne LaPierre’s intro music (Huey Lewis’ “The Power of Love”).
To sum up Ryan’s point about the ills of giving free lunches to school children, Stewart recalled, “As Jesus once said, ‘If you give a man a fish, don’t, period, end of Bible.'”
But “The Daily Show” host simply had to hide from LaPierre’s description of America as a nightmare, GTA 5-esque landscape.
Watch the clip above and click over to “The Daily Show” for more.
Investigators doubt terrorism in Malaysian plane’s disappearance, Snowden pats himself on the back, and more
1. Experts see no signs of terrorism in Malaysian plane mystery
Malaysian authorities said Tuesday that one of two men allegedly traveling with stolen passports on Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 when it disappeared Saturday was an Iranian seeking asylum in Europe. Investigators said that weakened the theory that the plane was the target of an attack. Still, experts have not ruled out sabotage, hijacking, mechanical problems, or any other potential explanation for how the Boeing 777 vanished with 239 people on board. [TIME, Reuters]
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2. Snowden says his leaks made the world more secure
Edward Snowden said Monday that the government was wrong when it said his leaking of secret National Security Agency documents had endangered national security. Speaking from Moscow via webcast to people at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Texas, Snowden said his exposure of NSA data mining had benefited people all over the world. Reforms underway at the NSA, he said, vindicated him. [The Christian Science Monitor, Voice of America]
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3. Senate approves a bill aiming to reduce military rapes
The Senate unanimously approved a bill Monday that would change the way the military handles sexual assault cases. The legislation would remove the “good soldier defense” that has cast doubt on past criminal allegations, but, unlike a rival bill that failed last week, it would leave decisions on rape prosecutions to military commanders. Congress and the Pentagon have pledged to address the persistent problem of rape in the military. [CBS News]
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4. Russia cements control in Crimea ahead of referendum
Pro-Russia forces took control of more Ukrainian military bases and government facilities in Crimea on Monday. The moves helped to solidify Moscow’s control over the region ahead of aSunday referendum on whether the region should break away from Ukraine and become part of Russia. An online poll created by the pro-Russia Crimean parliament showed voters favoring a union with Russia by nearly a 3-to-1 margin. [The Washington Post]
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5. Colorado rakes in $2 million in January pot taxes
Colorado government took in $2 million in marijuana taxes in January, the state reported Monday. The total — the world’s first accounting of the legal recreational pot trade — meant that $14 million worth of the weed was sold at the state-licensed dispensaries that managed to open that month (there are now 160 of them). After Colorado legalized marijuana in 2012, voters approved 12.9 percent sales taxes and 15 percent excise taxes. [The Associated Press]
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6. Judge pauses Army general’s rape trial
A military judge has halted the court-martial of Army Brig. Gen. Jeffrey Sinclair to look into possible Pentagon interference in the rape trial. Col. James Pohl, the presiding judge, dismissed the jury to consider whether Army officials who rejected Sinclair’s plea offer had been unduly influenced, after emails surfaced in which a senior military lawyer, writing to Fort Bragg judicial officials, questioned the accuser’s credibility. [CNN]
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7. Scientists develop a blood test to predict Alzheimer’s
Researchers have come up with a blood test they say can predict whether a person will develop Alzheimer’s disease. Their study, published in the journal Nature Medicine, looked at 525 people ages 70 or older. The blood of people who developed signs of the mental impairment that comes with Alzheimer’ had 10 metabolites that were depleted. Tests for these chemicals can spot those who will develop the disease within three years. [Healthline]
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8. Sbarro’s goes under as shoppers abandon mall food courts
Sbarro’s, devastated by a decline in customers at shopping-mall food courts, has filed for bankruptcy for the second time in three years. The 800-restaurant pizza chain has “a worldwide brand and potential for future growth,” Chief Financial Officer Carolyn Spatafora said in court papers, but Sbarro’s outlets just can’t keep going in the face of “an unprecedented decline in mall traffic.” [Bloomberg]
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9. “Average Barbie” project gets financial backers
Apparently, the world is ready for a doll with normal proportions to serve as a contrast to Barbie. Artist Nickolay Lamm re-imagined the iconic Barbie doll with a build like that of an average 19-year-old woman. The idea was to promote healthy body image standards. Lamm launched acrowdfunding website to raise $95,000 for his project. As of Monday, five days after Lamm started the effort, the project had raised $380,461. [Stylist]
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10. Bonds puts on a Giants uniform again
Home-run king Barry Bonds returned to the San Francisco Giants as a spring-training coach on Monday, seven years after ending his career as a professional baseball player under the cloud of a steroid scandal. Bonds was lighter than during his playing years, and offered a friendly greeting to reporters despite years of unflattering coverage. “It feels really good to be back,” Bonds said. “It feels really good to participate.” [CBS Sports]
Before Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) fibbed and told a story at CPAC about free school lunches that turned out to be false, the talking point had been long in the making as a conservative rallying cry about the evils of liberal ideology.
It was adopted in the Senate primaries by Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), who suggested in December that school kids “maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria” if they want to avail of free lunches. Kingston, who is struggling in a three-way race with two ultraconservative opponents, was later found to have expensed nearly $4,200 in meals to his congressional office.
Last April, a state lawmaker in West Virginia, Ray Canterbury (R), argued during a school lunch debate that it’d be a “good idea” to have “the kids work for their lunches.” He proposed that they take out the trash, sweep the hallways or mow the lawns in order to earn their food.
Sometimes the sentiment materializes into action. In the Salt Lake City School District in January, lunch trays were swiped away from dozens of elementary school children before they could eat anything, as officials told those students it was because they had negative balances in their accounts. (Officials later apologized after an outcry from parents.)
The National School Lunch Program, which provides federal assistance for public and private schools to offer lunch to children, has been around since 1946. It feeds 17.5 million kids with free or reduced-cost lunches every school day. The lunch is free if their household earns below 130 percent of the federal poverty line, and cheaper if it’s between 130 and 185 percent of poverty. It aims to address a real problem: three out of five teachers report that kids in their classrooms regularly come to school hungry, and a majority says the problem is getting worse, according to a survey by the advocacy group No Kid Hungry.
So, what’s really behind the antipathy toward government-subsidized school lunches?
It stitches together a panoply of notions that are popular with conservatives: that the government spends too much money helping the poor, that free lunches are emblematic of wealth redistribution and that families (rather than the state) should look after children. It’s also a dog-whistle to the idea, which has grown popular on the right in the Obama era, that too many able-bodied people are lazy and mooching off the federal government. A corollary to this is the claim that liberals don’t value the dignity of work. Wound together, “no free school lunches” serves as a rallying cry that plays to the GOP base’s primal ideological convictions.
The idea that kids should work was also test-driven by Newt Gingrich during the 2012 GOP presidential primaries: he suggested that schools fire their janitors and have kids clean.
A parallel story that is aggravating conservative sentiments is First Lady Michelle Obama’s effort to make kids healthier by overhauling nutrition standards for school lunches. Not only has it prompted howls of outrage from radio host Rush Limbaugh, it has motivated three Republican congressmen to introduce legislation that requires the White House and U.S. Department of Agriculture to abide by the same nutrition standards.
Conservative news outlets have tapped into the zeitgeist. Back in July 2012, Fox News aired a segment about the “controversy” of “taxpayers feeding every child, whether they’re needy or not.” The segment was about the summer lunch program, which is there to assist kids who rely on assistance for lunches through the school year. An anchor said, “It’s a valuable resource for families who are struggling and, critics say, a nice freebie for those who are not.”
By the time Ryan — the House’s budget chairman and a rumored 2016 presidential hopeful — seized on the notion, it was well-worn in his movement. Last week he spoke to conservatives of a young, poor boy who didn’t want a free lunch and instead wanted one that his parents made for him. “The left is making a big mistake here. What they’re offering people is a full stomach and an empty soul,” he said. “The American people want more than that.”
It is a testament to the power of the idea among conservatives that Ryan’s tale was not only second-hand from a state official in Wisconsin but also fictitious. He ended up apologizing for “failing to verify the original source of the story.”
The Fifth Column 