The Obama 'narrative' is overshadowing this presidency's real stories

[babylonsister]

The Obama 'narrative' is overshadowing this presidency's real stories

By Jason Horowitz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 20, 2010

snip//

"So much of the coverage and commentary has to do with the narrative, stagecraft, the political implications of what he is doing," said David Axelrod, Obama's special adviser for narrative, stagecraft and the political implications of what the president is doing. "When you are president of the United States, the most important thing is that you cope with the disaster." Not, that is, the story line of the disaster.

Imperfect messenger though he is, Axelrod has a point. The BP oil spill has largely been treated as the latest plot twist in the Obama epic. The plume of crude rising from the seabed is not only the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, darkening the gulf and thousands of lives and pervading the nation with a sense of helplessness, it is a metaphor for Obama's loss of control, a revealing moment to study our protagonist. Will he feel the seafarer's pain? Will he shake with fury? Will he weep tears into the salty sea? Sing to me, Muse, of the wrath of Washington's Achilles.

The initial government response did not provide enough dramatic juice to slake the chorus. So Obama visited the Gulf Coast again and again and again. With cameras rolling, he got into character and knelt to the ground and sifted sand through his fingertips. He grimaced on morning show interviews and pondered whose "ass to kick."

Then, on Tuesday night, in his first Oval Office address, speaking in martial terms of a "battle," he sought to move the story line off of him. Onward toward energy legislation! "Now," Obama thundered, "is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash America's innovation and seize control of our own destiny."

But much of the reaction to the speech, rather than focusing on the plight of shrimpers or the legislative agenda, critiqued the address as a new panel in the ongoing Obama storyboard. On CNN, for example, White House correspondent Ed Henry complained that Obama had not discussed how much oil is leaking into the gulf, "perhaps because it doesn't fit into his narrative that the government is all over this."

In this particularly meta moment, the overarching Obama story line hovers a level above events, distracting from the disaster in the gulf, glossing over the question of whether the government's concrete actions are sufficient, removing readers and viewers and listeners from reality. The narrative has been constantly updated -- Obama's a hero one day, a goat the next -- as ravenous news cycles and impatient audiences demand conclusions, and attention-starved media outlets can no longer subsist on the modest first drafts of history.

more...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/18/AR2010061803052.html

[LaFeminist]

1. We are unfair to the mainstream media

They do not hate us, as demonstrated by this excellent piece.

[MadMaddie]

3. This particular piece points out the obvious for those of us

who actually are paying attention.

However; the MSM on the television controls the message and they are the ones that are perpetuating the everchanging "narrative". The MSM on the television is trying to create a train wreck for their viewing audience.

[depakid]

7. errr... this is the Post

it's reputation hovers somewhere just a bit above Fox "news."

[ProSense]

2. Appropriate

video: How Dummies Report the Gulf Oil Crisis

[monmouth]

4. As a kid I remember listening and then with TV, watching Eisenhower

speak. Never, ever, was there analysis on his tie, his tone of voice or whether or not he emoted. President Eisenhower had spoken and his words were analyzed, not the man...

[Pirate Smile]

5. "You have a touch of a Shakespearean character"

"Obama has a great deal of dramatic reserve," explained Harold Bloom, a Yale University literary critic. He said the combination of the memoirist in chief's status as the most literate president since Abraham Lincoln and his inscrutable steeliness amounted to irresistible material for the "frustrated writers" in the press corps. "You have a touch of a Shakespearean character, and people start constructing narratives."


I remember on the day before the election, when the news broke that Obama's grandmother had died - just missing his election to the Presidency by hours - a group of pundits were on CNN talking about how sad it was that she didn't make it to the election and that neither his Mother or Grandfather were alive to see it either. Gloria Borger mentioned that Obama's life had a Shakespearean quality to it.

[depakid]

8. Interestingly enough the situation does have tragic qualities about it

Wherein the very strengths that assisted the protagonist's rise to power also turned out to be his http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamartia">hamartia.

The startlingly recklessness in the pronouncement of March 31- and the hubris in the comments that followed are both elements common to classical tragedy- they annoy the Gods, who in turn unleash misfortune.

[Jennicut]

6. I think most of us don't care about Obama's emotional state (he seems very well adjusted comparted

to W. and just in general). What matters is legislation, regulations, moving away from just big coal and big oil.