President Barack Obama, politically speaking, is coming off a great week – but he also triumphed in an unexpected arena, as a very impassioned TV-Critic-In-Chief…
I’m not sure which is more surprising: That a sitting President has any time at all to watch television, or that the viewing selections made are so intelligent. But what may be most impressive of all is that when President Obama sees something on TV he really likes, he does what only TV critics usually get to do.
He arranges a personal interview to learn more, and to talk with the program’s creator in person.
Obama has done this, in recent years, with two people I interviewed shortly after POTUS did the same thing – which is like being the poster child for emotional letdowns.
Ken Burns, the filmmaker behind The Civil War and so many other powerful and important PBS documentaries, was invited by Obama to visit the White House and talk with him about history and race. More recently, David Simon, creator of HBO’s The Wire, sat with Obama to address similar issues, localized to Baltimore but still applicable nationwide. Obama prefaced the talk by identifying The Wire as his favorite TV show: “One of the greatest, not just television shows, but pieces of art in the past couple of decades,” Obama said.
And then the interview began – with the President of the United States not answering questions, but asking them.
Pretty astounding. And then, last week, we were treated to another example of Obama as TV-Critic-In-Chief, when he sat down to interview the best and most tenured TV naturalist in the world, Sir David Attenborough.
The talk took place on the day Attenborough turned 89, and lasted the better part of an hour. BBC America hastily slipped it onto the schedule last weekend, as it was being shown in the United Kingdom, and repeats it tonight (Tuesday, June 30) at 11 p.m. ET. Also, the entire program is now available for viewing on the BBC America website. It’s a remarkable thing to witness – as unexpected, revealing and interesting as Obama’s recent appearance on Marc Maron’s W.T.F. podcast.
Obama is interested in climate change, and Attenborough’s personal perspective on what is and isn’t happening, and his theories as to why. Attenborough, for example, recently dove by submersible to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef – a dove he first took, with scuba gear, 60 years previously. And when Attenborough describes the changes, and man’s impact on the natural world around is, Obama listens, very intently.
As should we all…