MTV Townhall: Big Media Comes to Obama's Rescue

On October 14, 2010, members of the BIG MEDIA sponsored a well-crafted (faux) townhall meeting in which young adults got to talk to President Obama. The event was creatively titled: “A Conversation With President Obama,” and the goal was to stall Obama’s declining popularity (especially with young voters) by rekindling the excitement of 2008 all over again.

The reasons behind the “Conversation” were legion: The economy Obama promised to save is in shambles, the unemployment he campaigned on erasing is hovering near 10%, and his healthcare overhaul, which was supposed to provide affordable health insurance for everyone, is literally poised to break the bank (which is why McDonald’s and other well known companies have asked to opt out of it for a year in order to figure out how they can afford to continue insuring their employees.)

And of course, we can’t forget that Obama has taken George W. Bush’s $1.3 trillion deficit and turned it into $14 trillion. That represents a 90% increase in national debt from a guy who spent the 2008 campaign making fiscal responsibility and transparency a cornerstone of “hope and change.”

While these facts have been hard for some to swallow, even former supporters of Obama (including the young voters) have finally accepted the reality and, as a result, a Carter-like malaise has fallen over the country. Because of this, Obama finds himself at the helm of a Democrat-led titanic set to sink on November 2, 2010.

Thus various members of the BIG MEDIA held a pep rally for Obama, cleverly disguised as a townhall meeting. And while the viewing audience was supposed to watch the event thinking questions would be spontaneous and anything could happen, in reality nothing was left to chance in the televised program (which was actually a well-scripted event where every question and questioner was prescreened).

Heck, some of the questioners were actually actors who played their roles for free.

MTV not only proudly hosted and promoted the “Conservation,” but also took part in screening Obama’s would-be questioners: A screening process characterized by an effort to insure that questions would be light and that the supposedly non-partisan event would be pro-Obama. (No wonder the interns from the Republican National Committee who wanted to attend the event were told “thanks but no thanks.”)

And of all the questions that made it through the screening process, those on the issues of gay rights and the push for a repeal of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) were predominant. Such questions provided Obama a perfect opportunity to make policy statements designed especially for the MTV crowd.

For example, in one exchange, Obama was asked why DADT was still on the books and why he hadn’t simply used his Executive Powers to end it? This gave the him the opportunity to promise the gay community once more that if they’ll stand by him, DADT will not only end, but will actually end on his watch.

How scary is this? The very President who knew absolutely nothing about economics, and who has subsequently driven our economy into the ground, knows perhaps even less about the military, yet he plans to tell the military which personnel policies are acceptable and which aren’t. (Of course the execs at MTV don’t care. Rather, they seem fixated on using the “Conversation” to carry water for Obama and to help themselves somehow regain the political clout they enjoyed during the Clinton years.)

But the attempt is a faltering one. For MTV and the rest of the BIG MEDIA don’t sway nearly as many young minds as they did in the 1990s, and the small taste of success they experienced via Obama’s election in 2008 has long been undone by Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and voter’s remorse.

Therefore the bottom line is this: There is really no way to stave off the referendum Obama is going to face over his policies in the coming midterm elections. The American people have seen his “hope and change” for what it is: a facade just like MTV’s “Conversation.”