At 2.30 p.m. (EST) President Obama will appear on YouTube answering questions submitted by the website’s users. With questions now closed, the “Your Interview with the President” YouTube page is showing that 193,077 people submitted 139,602 questions.
I rummaged through some of the questions to pick out highlights and spotlight some budding journos with a knack for asking the right questions. I found some of that. I also found musicians plugging their latest songs. What I found more than anything, though, were questions about pot. Most of them went something like this one from “RadicalRuss.”
I was not alone in noticing the trend. UPI reviewed the questions and noted that after users voted on the questions they wanted to see asked…
The top 10 questions all involved ending or changing the government’s war on drugs, legalizing or decriminalizing marijuana and embracing industrial hemp as a “green” initiative to help farmers…
Will be interesting to see if Obama puffs or passes on those.
Elsewhere, there is evidence that this was a great and less-than-great idea. In one video question, for instance, a group of North Carolina teachers ask, “What are your suggestions to us as teachers for closing the achievement gap when factors such as home life, parental involvement, socioeconomic status etc. all impact the student’s performance but are beyond the educator’s control?”
Then, in another, “lawcanuck” suggests America and Canada become one country, and in another again, a user asks, “why is all the government Illuminati.”
Here’s a potpourri selection.
Somebody get that man a chair in the James S. Brady Briefing Room.
Joel Meares is a former CJR assistant editor.