Saturday, June 8, 2013

"People? People..." (Barack Obama LIVE, without a Net / Note)

 
San Jose, California, June 7, 2013:  President Obama takes the stage to deliver a speech when he realizes that something is wrong - very wrong.

The audience is prepared, the podium is in place, the lighting is 'lit', the President of the United States looks down at his podium, turns stage-right and says... 
 
“My remarks are not sitting here.  People!  Things on a Friday afternoon get a little challenging..." 

(Moos Note:  The speech began at 9:00am - maybe the President forgot flying to California and believed that he was still in Washington, DC?)
 
“I’m uhhh….people….oh goodness….uhhhh...folks are sweating back there right now.”
 



It's been a long time since President Obama has spoken "Live without a Net / Note / Teleprompter".  Given the events and 'leaks' of the past few weeks, I commend the man on showing up in public - at all.  Yes, you read this correctly, I said something positive about the President (feel free to write this date down for future reference.) 

[Note to self:  Consider scheduling Cranial CAT Scan for Wednesday AM]

I can understand President Obama's reasoning in wanting to stand behind someone else's words.  Speech writers for the President do a great job of crafting an appropriate message for the 'audience du jour'.  They have to.  It is, after all, their job. 

If you're not good at your job, you shouldn't DO it - or, at least, you shouldn't get paid for it. 

It is in this spirit that I offer the following suggestions to 'help the President do his job better' (because as we learned this week, he's paying someone to read my, your, and our collective posts, comments, and e-mails in general). 

As of this week -- I feel so very, very, important!




OPTION A:

But?  Thinking about it now...  I wonder? 

Given President Obama's lack of preparation for his speech yesterday morning / afternoon (whichever time of day the President says it is), perhaps we should pay the President's Speech Writers to give his speeches on his behalf? 

I mean, if he's not going to be prepared enough to take the speech with him to the podium, have an 'emergency back-up teleprompter' standing by, or have even the vaguest of notions as to what's IN the speech prior to the address in the first place, why don't we just have someone else present it for him?  It's the kindest thing to do for the man.




OPTION B:

Traveling on Air Force One is so very expensive, and I know that President Obama wants nothing more than to shave BILLIONS from Federal Spending!  Since the speech was given in California - we could request that Matt Damon, George Clooney, BeyoncĂ©,  Leonardo DiCaprio, Reese Witherspoon, or almost any other Hollywood A-List Celebrity to give the speech for him!  They could read it ahead of time, commit it to memory and then present it to the audience...  Verbatim!  AND, they could do it with such faux 'feeling'!

Why didn't I / they think of this sooner?!?!? 

No!  We do NOT need to FLY the President across the country.  Let's keep him safe, right there at the White House where he can do his good work 24x7x365 (excepting, of course, those very rare instances when he's out golfing, campaigning, fund-raising, on vacation, or out of the country).   




OPTION C:

If 'Stars' aren't available to 'double' for the President, all the White House will need to do is have some West Coast 'Geek Squad' kid set up a large computer monitor in the conference hall, place it on an otherwise-empty chair, hang a flag to either side of the screen and viola!  A Presidential Webinar!  

The President will KNOW his speech is ready because he'll have his notes, he'll have his teleprompter, he'll have other people's thoughts right there in front of him to, um, read!  He could even RECORD his LIVE speech in advance, just so that he will not make ANY mistakes!  Then, when the speech is over, the video feed will be accidentally 'cut' so that the President will not have to take questions from those turn-coat reporters who used-to-be so friendly to him.

Next, of course, the NSA will read reporters' e-mails to see what they're saying privately about the Administration to determine who is still 'with the program' and who is not.  This should dramatically cut down on the number of folks in the White House Press Corps and the expense of doughnuts and coffee in the Capital's version of the 'Green Room'. 



OPTION D: 

The CGI (digital) Option.  Take any script written for the President, run it through a Text to Speech conversion program (they're really quite good), sample the President's voice for the audio file and create a 'Virtual President Obama' complete with computer-generated 'President Obama talking head'. 

This last option could be a real money-maker also!  Imagine being able to 'buy' the President, run him on your Xbox or Nintendo PS 3 and programming him to say things like:

"Yes Mike, I think you really do have some solid ideas here.  I'll run them by Harry Reid in the morning and, um, get to work on them immediately!",

or,

"Yes, I also think that George Soros is a great big tub of lard - I don't like him either!  And, have you ever been close enough to smell the man's breath, it's like a cross between a diner's dumpster and the Potomac in August".  

Yeah, I'd buy this program for $59.95.  Although, if government WERE involved, it'd probably closer to $60,000. 

But if it were, it would still ALMOST be worth it - regardless of price.
. . 
This post, like so many others, once begun has not gone where I thought it was going.  Looking back up at what I've written, I have a question which I did not intend to ask when I started this. 

But then again, maybe in the end it's a variant of the statement that came in 'under the radar' above? 

"If you're not good at your job, you shouldn't DO it - or, at least, you shouldn't get paid for it."

The questions I'm thinking on this chilly Saturday morning are these, "If the President has no words of his own - why do we need him to speak someone else's words to us?  And who, exactly, do those words belong to?"

Maybe I'm just crabby because I woke up at 4:18 this morning?  Or maybe it's because when I did wake up this morning I was thinking about the last thing the President said before he received his 'script' from his stumbling aide:  "Folks are sweating back there right now.”

Always the 'Heavy'.  Always with the 'Boot on the neck'.  Always the 'Chicago Way'.

Always Obama.






President Obama, I also have learned not to care but I didn't need pot or blow to do it.  I learned not to care by listening to you.  Gee, thanks for that.

Have a nice weekend folks.

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