President Obama during last night’s BriWi special (h/t, TVNewser): “I don’t find most of the cable chatter persuasive.”
(Imagine if he’d said otherwise? Actually, my mind has been changed numerous times by both Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan. Not to mention Carville and Carlson back in their day.)
Brian Williams asked Obama whether, if he’s watching TV and stumbles on a news channel on which “a debate [is] underway about him,” he stops and watches. Obama replied that “it feels like WWF wrestling,” where “everybody’s got their set pieces,” so he “generally” does not stop and watch.
UPDATE: Dan Froomkin on Williams’s Inside the Obama White House:
It’s the kind of substanceless fawning that leads some to conclude that the press is soft on Obama. But this show wasn’t about his politics or his policies. It was a celebration and amplification of the star power of the presidency in general, and of this president in particular. Simply showing him eating a burger they apparently consider great television….
[T]here’s almost nothing of substance here. This presidency, more than most, is more than just the sum of its photo ops. You just wouldn’t know it from this show.
