I just finished watching Obama's speech at the correspondents dinner. First, it's very refreshing to have a president that is circumspect and confident enough to be able to poke fun at himself and his administration. The picture of Obama sitting down for a conference with Captain Hook I thought was particularly tasteful.
But I actually thought the best moment was towards the end of the speech, around 15:25 in the youtube video, when Obama was addressing in a fairly serious manner the state of modern media and their importance in society, etc. When listing a bunch of other values, Obama said "we look to you for truth, even if it's always an approximation," which was followed by a burst of laughter in the audience. Despite the laughter, I had the feeling that it was not actually intended as a joke, and the audience just sort of didn't get it. Either way, though, I think it highlights what a monumental shift we've had from the last man in charge. I mean, recognizing the heuristic difficulties of truth prediction is something of a far cry from "the axis of evil."
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If I may offer this by way of contrast.
"A high-level" Bush administration official discussing the media: the media are "in what we call the reality-based community [which] believe[s] that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world works anymore. We're an empire now, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study, too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Somehow, the postmodern critique of teleological history (Marxist or progressive, i.e. existing outside of the world and its actors) has been turned to justify Second Life, the Imperial Edition.
Wow, that is some impressive speaking of truth from power to plebs. Do you happen to know who that "high-level" bush admin official was, or a source where I could read more of it? It's blowing my mind the more I read it.
Perhaps the contrast is more in the public and media domains than in the actual internal workings and thought-processes of the administrations. In a weird way, this kind of turns things around to make me think of obama as the honest but bumbling youth, while the bush administration is the sinister, knowing older sibling, too well schooled (reminiscent of smerdyakov in the Brothers Karamazon, gotta read). It seems that the bush admin's Second Life depends is in fact dependent upon the lack of recognition of truth-production (in both the public and media-driven domains) as transparent, whereas Obama is trying to draw the public into that conversation (i.e. the postmodern critique conversation). Perhaps a bit optimistic to see the public as ready for such transparency, but as always, the internet is the answer.
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