New White House video: What's your favorite Obama moment, celebrities?

A reminder on the day after Meryl Streep’s speech that Hollywood’s allegiance to the Democratic Party isn’t one-way. This is an official White House production, larded up with cameos from the likes of Tom Hanks, Michael Jordan, and Leonardo DiCaprio, stroking his bearded chin for extra gravitas. There are average Americans in here too, but between the glamour set slobbering over Obama for the last eight years and the Clinton campaign’s endless star-farking before the election, you have to wonder who the real focus of this clip is meant to be. Are the celebrities there to interject a bit of star power amid the interviews with everyday people, or are the everyday people there as a nod to democracy amid the much more important bits from the Hollywood aristocracy?

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Before you answer, note that this is what Josh Earnest was doing with his time at today’s White House briefing:

President Obama’s top spokesman on Monday defended actress Meryl Streep’s Golden Globes speech that criticized President-elect Donald Trump.

“She clearly was delivering a thoughtful, carefully considered message that she believes in deeply,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest said.

“It seemed to me to be fairly straightforward exercise of her First Amendment rights as a citizen of the United States,” he added.

I’ve never understood why the White House Press Secretary feels entitled to comment on left-right dust-ups instead of sticking to goings-on inside the executive branch, but I suppose you have to allow for a certain amount of partisanship from the spokesman for a president from one party vis-a-vis the other side. I really don’t understand, though, why he’d feel obliged to comment on a speech at an awards show that didn’t even reference Obama. Pro tip: If you’re at such a loss for something meaningful to say about someone else’s remarks that you need to stoop to something as approvingly banal as acknowledging that they had a First Amendment right to say it, just give a polite “no comment” and move on. Obama’s got 11 days left. Liberals won’t be mad if Josh Earnest declines to give Streep a rhetorical high-five for dumping on Trump.

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The most noteworthy thing about this video, by the way, isn’t the celebrity cameos, it’s how painfully lame most of the Obama “memorable moments” are. No one so much as mentions ObamaCare until Samuel L. Jackson pops up in minute four. Incredibly, the Bin Laden operation isn’t mentioned at all; neither is the Iran deal, which supposedly defanged the Middle East’s greatest security threat, or his executive amnesties for illegals. They do, however, find a few seconds for the time Obama watched a kid fire off a marshmallow cannon inside the White House. Poor DiCaprio, stroking that beard oh so thoughtfully, is reduced to reminiscing about the time that Obama called climate change the most important issue facing the world at the UN, which is standard left-wing cant and of zero practical effect. The random guy who appears before him at least mentions actual policy, the Paris Accord, in getting in his own climate change talking points. If this is the best O’s own PR team can do in polishing his legacy, he really should worry over how history will remember him.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | December 16, 2024
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