Abe Greenwald ain't impressed with the news that the President-Elect's weekly radio address will be simulcast on YouTube. Me neither. Have you been to change.gov? There's this button on the side (see it at right) where you can tell "your" story and another place where you can express "your" vision for America and tell "your" agenda.Of course there's no place to read what stories and ideas they're actually collecting. Occasionally they feature alleged testimonies in the site's blog. All very Oprah-y and Big Brother-y all at once. It's all about you! And let us tell you what you think! Amazingly, it's exactly what we think! We're all one in a General Will kinduva way!
Ahem. Sorry.
Back to Greenwald.
“The address will be turned into a YouTube video which we will post on www.change.gov,” the official website of the Obama transition team, he said.
“No president-elect or president has ever turned the radio address into a multi-media opportunity before,” Shapiro added.
An opportunity for whom? And for what? For President Obama to recreate himself on every last surface and sound wave that hasn’t yet been “changed” in his image? Or an opportunity for the rest of us to marvel at the planet’s last, best hope?
Here’s the Orwellian cherry on top:
“This is just one of many ways that president-elect Obama will communicate directly with the American people and make the White House and the political process more transparent,” [Shapiro] said.
Transparent? The intentions and inclinations of Obama are so deeply shrouded in contradictions, denials, and feints that his supporters had no choice but to try and turn this cryptic indecipherability into a selling point. Here’s the New York Times:
Even some of Mr. Obama’s friends call him unusually opaque. After hashing out a question with him, “you may come away thinking, ‘Wow, he agrees with me,’ ” said Rashid Khalidi, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at Columbia and a former adviser to Palestinian diplomatic delegations. “But later, when you get home and think about it, you are not sure.”
None of us are quite sure how he feels about you, Mr. Khalidi. Maybe if Nick Shapiro forwards the “transparent” memo over to the Los Angeles Times, they’d be kind enough to give us a “a multi-media opportunity” to find out. But for now, our own government will issue weekly Youtube installments of the Obama Show, to run on every computer screen in the land. While the one video everyone actually wants to see remains under the lock and key of a corporation claiming to be part of America’s free press, and obligated to deliver truth to American citizens.
Change has come to America.
