NOVEMBER 5, 2007
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Just a quick thought about that Obama "Saturday Night Live" appearance you've no doubt seen by now. The obvious punchline is that Obama is comfortable enough in his own skin to show up to a Halloween party as himself, as opposed to Hillary, who is constantly rooting around for a winning persona. "I'm not going to change who I am just because it's Halloween," Obama says. But there's another interpretation of the sketch that's less flattering to Obama: That he's so self-absorbed it didn't occur to him to come as anyone other than himself. There's already a low-grade chatter among journalists about how Obama is a little egotistical, that he's never more engaged than when reflecting on his own identity or his own achievements, that his campaign is one big exercise in navel-gazing. (See, for example, here.) I wonder: Was the SNL sketch intended as a kind of inside joke--Obama's way of making fun of these tendencies? Or is he so oblivious to them he didn't realize the joke could be interpreted that way? Knowing what I know about Obama, I suspect it's the former. But who knows?
--Noam Scheiber
5 comments
"low-grade chatter among journalists" -- who exactly is being self-absorbed here?
Low-grade, indeed.
- stgla
November 5, 2007 at 1:35pm
could it possibly be that the SNL writers wrote it the way it was because they thought it was funny? And that putting a real Obama in a costume would have meant there would have been no joke?
- blackton
November 5, 2007 at 1:49pm
An egotistical presidential candidate? Ye GODS!
- drdannyu
November 5, 2007 at 2:47pm
Yet another piece of evidence to support the idea that political journalism should not be a full time job: it leads to extreme ADD (you can't say anything interesting if you have to cover the same stump speeches each day), which in turn leads to trivial and unimportant gossip about gossip. Well done.
- ralphnelle
November 5, 2007 at 3:23pm
Noam, my apologies for the cheap shot here. My post says more about my current frustrations with this race than anything else. For what it is worth (if anything!), I consistently enjoy your sober and insightful analysis. The same goes for Crowley.
- ralphnelle
November 5, 2007 at 4:17pm