What news was made during Matt Lauer’s Super Bowl Sunday interview with President Obama on NBC? What’s the headline? Depends, of course, on who was watching:
USA Today: “Obama: Substantial number of troops will be home by next Super Bowl Sunday”
ComputerWorld: “Obama still won’t say whether he’s using a BlackBerry or something else”
Reuters: “Audio issues interrupt NBC’s Obama interview”
Politico: “Obama: Reelection rests on stimulus”
US Weekly: “President Obama Jokes About Getting Bumped From Us Weekly Cover”
But Lauer also managed to tease out some news on the all-important What The Obamas Eat front (in a section of the interview that didn’t make the Super Bowl Sunday cut but aired this morning on Today):
MATT LAUER: There’s been a massive peanut-butter products recall in this country over the last several weeks. Most of the products track — trace to one plant down in Georgia that has a bit of a history of sending out products even though there have been traces of salmonella found. The question, the obvious question people wanna know, is the FDA doing its job?
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I — I think that the FDA has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch. And so we’re gonna be doing a complete review of FDA operations … at bare minimum, we should be able to count on our government keeping our kids safe when they eat peanut butter … that’s what Sasha eats for — for lunch — probably three times a week. And, you know, I don’t wanna have to worry about whether she’s gonna get sick as a consequence to having — having her lunch.
Of his daughters, President Obama also told Lauer: “If there is a pair of kids who can handle this weird fishbowl, it is those two.” And, “Nobody’s cooler than my two girls.”
Nobody? What about Peter Orszag, the administration’s head of the Office of Management and Budget?
For Vanity Fair, Maureen Orth asks of Orszag and all of his new colleagues: “Can Obama’s New Team Make Government Cool Again?” (In the same issue Orth also asks the equally urgent question: “Can [White House Social Secretary] Desiree Rogers Make Washington Fun Again?”) Of course, Orth’s reports are really just “text” to accompany Annie Leibovitz’s photos of Obama’s team (check out the “news-tracking team.”)
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.