Is it un-presidential to pose with a selfie stick? To pretend to shoot hoops all alone in the White House? To make fun of yourself on the internet? To say “Yolo”?
Barack Obama has launched those important national questions with a game appearance in an unusual video produced to drive subscriptions in healthcare plans before the end of an open enrollment period on Sunday.
The video was produced by Buzzfeed and released on Thursday, a day after an interview by the news organization with the president.
In the video, the president pretends to fail to dunk a cookie in a tall glass of milk. The cookie is too big. “Thanks, Obama,” the president says, joining his fans online who use the phrase to mock his opponents who use the phrase to mock the president.
The conceit of the video is that Obama, waiting for an interviewer to arrive, is practicing delivering his pitch about signing up for healthcare in a mirror. He is kept waiting. Boredom gives way to goofy behavior. He sticks his tongue out to check it. He poses in Joe Biden’s shades. He gets out the selfie stick. And he shoots those invisible hoops.
If it all seems too involuted, circular or self-referential to you, you may not be in the demographic the White House hopes to target with its latest Obamacare enrollment drive. The law depends on younger and relatively healthy enrollees to keep things solvent for insurers. About 7.75 million people have enrolled in healthcare plans for 2015 in advance of the Sunday deadline, according to the White House.
The Buzzfeed video featuring the president, called Things Everybody Does But Doesn’t Talk About, is a spinoff of a popular earlier Buzzfeed video, called 7 Creepy Things Everyone Does, which in turn was merely one entry in a much broader YouTube genre.
The current White House media shop has experimented with the presidential image before. Obama was the first sitting president to appear on a late-night comedy show, and the first to participate in online hangouts. In January, the president was interviewed at the White House by three young YouTube stars after he delivered his State of the Union address, which was published online in advance by the White House for the first time ever.
While Obama is the first president to play with a selfie stick, other presidents have toyed with entertainment and technology. As a presidential candidate, Bill Clinton wore sunglasses and played saxophone on late-night TV. George W Bush, at the end of his second term, became the first president to deliver his weekly radio address as a podcast, if not a video.
The video had almost 1.6m views after about an hour.
A selfie stick is a pole with a camera attachment used for taking a self-portrait at more than arm’s length. Yolo means “you only live once”.
Barack Obama - BuzzFeed video to sell Obamacare
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