Conservative syndicated columnist George Will (AP Photo)
“What’s different ... about this is, it’s long been known that if narcissism were oil, this president would be Saudi Arabia. And therefore, the picture of the president taking pictures of himself reinforces a not flattering narrative,” Will said.
In the video, titled, “Things Everybody Does But Doesn’t Talk About,” Obama is seen posing and making faces in a mirror. He even uses a selfie stick to take pictures of himself. He then practices delivering lines about the deadline for signing up for health insurance. He later tries dunking cookies in a glass of milk. When it doesn’t fit, he seems to blame himself, saying, “Thanks Obama.”
After drawing a picture of first lady Michelle Obama with a pencil and declaring, “That’s pretty good,” Obama practices his jumpshot but is interrupted by someone walking into the room. “Mr. President?” the man says. “Can I live?” Obama replies. He closes out the video with the pop culture phrase: “YOLO,” which stands for You Only Live Once.
“I cannot let this week pass without getting you guys to comment on the video that Barack Obama - and hear it is, did for BuzzFeed, to get millennials to sign up for Obamacare,” said “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace.
Wallace questioned the timing of the video. “One, the question of dignity. Two, the question of timing. This was done on the day of the death of Kayla Mueller, the American hostage, the death -- her killing by ISIS was confirmed. Any second thoughts on the White House about this?” he asked the Associated Press’s Julie Pace.
“Definitely no second thoughts among the White House officials I talked to. They say that they get millions of hits for these videos. They get groups like us to talk about them. Get tons of attention for the health care law. We've seen the president do this before,” Pace said. “I know that officials at the White House will roll their eyes at me and dismiss me as old media, traditional, but I think there's a line that you risk crossing. I think that this video and others the president has done goes right up to that line.”
“Doesn’t there have to be a line?” Wallace asked Fox News political analyst Juan Williams.
“There is no -- what line? The line is you go where the viewers are and you appeal to the American people. And he's not -- it's not anything that I think you would view as different as ‘Laugh-In’ with Nixon or Clinton on Arsenio. I think that you don't want to demean your office, but you want to appeal to people and talk to them in their language.”