Stay tuned for Obama's next show: Between Two Drones

So Erik hates it when people tailor their message in order to better engage with their target demographic. Good to know.

Also Erik doesn't know that Congress writes the budget, not Obama.

I actually really liked the "Cosmos" bit, much more than the "Ferns".
Are we over-thinking this stuff?

I thought the Cosmos intro sounded too perfunctory to be really inspiring, and I think this was a good, creative way to get a targeted message out. Weirdly, I think the whole thing should have been considered beneath the dignity of the office if they hadn't had the reveal at the end that they were taping in the White House.

As for the rest of it, I agree this is overthinking things. Lots of things are a "sales pitch" if you break them down all the way, e.g. this whole site we're using is just a mousetrap for clicks to sell ads to pay salaries to support what you actually want to do but can't without enough money: write about culture. So you end up writing a lot of comedic blog posts you'd otherwise not write. Guess what? Obama has to do some stuff outside his comfort zone too to get what he wants, something he considers truly worthwhile. His willingness to do so should be praiseworthy, shouldn't it?

Here, Barry gets his message out, Zach gets some medal from the absurdist art Olympics, and you get a chuckle. Everybody wins.

It only feels weird because a) it is shot to feel weird, b) it's the President in a weird setting, and c) he doesn't have the delivery and timing of a professional actor/comedian or the time to do 30 takes.

I had a harsher reaction to the "Ferns" piece than you did, because all of Zach's supposedly edgy insults were all easily-deflected softballs or nonsensical absurdities and all of Obama's supposedly witty rejoinders were obviously written by the makers of the show rather than coming from himself. I doubt Obama has watched "Hangover 3." Heck, he probably didn't even watch the first one (not that I would blame him for skipping it). The putdown of Zach obviously came from Zach himself (and/or his producers) and so equally has no teeth. It was just two people pretending to be edgy when the whole thing was padded deeper than a Volvo baby carriage. It was a tired exercise in false humor, and I couldn't find it the least bit amusing.

That the Obama Administration's PR Team understands how modern media works better than the Washington Post or the NY Times neither surprises nor alarms me.

What is entertaining is that they are still convinced it means something more important to be the Washington Post than to be a comedy actor with a web series.

The message the Obama PR team intended to deliver was received loud and clear, at least based on the solid page and a half of shares in my FB feed this morning.

Would a hard hitting Washington Post article have achieved the same penetration with the highly educated, actively political and voting young middle aged (30 to 45) constituency of my Facebook thread? I doubt it.

And yeah, I agree with the previous commenters: The fact that a traditional news outlet has to serve up Ted Cruz pablum as counter argument in order to appear objective does not, in fact, make their questions more probing, accurate or relevant.

There is a role for thoughtful, ethical, investigative journalism in the world today. It's just not the right platform to talk to young liberals about health insurance.

TLDR ALL OF YOU GODDAMMIT