Posted on 01/20/2015 8:45:57 AM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
Tuning into the middle of a Morning Joe segment today, at first I assumed that MSNBC's Ari Melber was chatting with the Oscar nominees. But no, turns out Melber had scored interviews with President Obama's SOTU speechwriting team. You'll excuse my confusion. As you'll see, just like the Oscar hopefuls, the SOTU writers appeared to be a panorama of people of pallor.
Melber had been given special behind-the-scenes White House access this past Friday night to do his piece. As the cameras roamed around, a couple of presumably relatively junior African-American staffers could be seen. But the senior folks, those out front and with whom Melber actually spoke, were, well, "driven snow" comes to mind. And turns out Obama's head speechwriter, Cody Keenan, is a . . . Sigma Chi frat guy.
View the video here.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsbusters.org ...
Paging Al Sharpton! Ping to Today show list.
ahaha PEOPLE of PALOR UNITE!!!
I remember when Presidents used to write their own speeches. Now it takes five or more staffers to do it?
I guess that they need to have people employed, not neccessarily on a balanced budget, but hey, they’re the feds, they are above everyone else’s morals.
You could clear that room with: “There’s a Prius outside with the lights on.”
LOL: post ‘o the day!
Trying to wrap up the Soccer Mom vote.
"The White House needed a pirate, and it turned to speechwriter Cody Keenan."
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/396717/ben-rhodes-special-guy-jonah-goldberg
The New York Times profiles Cody Keenan...
WASHINGTON One night last week Cody Keenan, the chief White House speechwriter President Obama has christened Hemingway, knew he needed help.
Mr. Keenan had spent 15 days holed up in a hotel room in Honolulu as the president vacationed nearby, and seven more in a windowless office in the basement of the West Wing trying to turn a blank computer screen into a 6,000-word State of the Union first draft. The lonesome process had finally gotten to him.
So the burly 34-year-old former high school quarterback left his White House office and trudged in the freezing rain to the nearby apartment of one of his closest friends in the administration, Benjamin J. Rhodes.
It was after midnight, but Mr. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser and the writer of many of the presidents foreign policy speeches, was up reading To Kill a Mockingbird to his 4-week-old daughter. The two men poured two single-malt Scotch whiskies and, with the baby resting quietly, began triage on Mr. Keenans prose. By 5 a.m., a more succinct draft was on its way to the president.
....people of pallor....good one. LOL....
Thanks: I’d love to claim credit for it but it’s been around for awhile.
Writers? All he really needs is a copy of Das Kapital and a copier.
All of that prose about the hours and hours of “working on the State of the Union Address” in isolation and under pressure ... (ad nauseum, ad nauseum) but ...
We are to believe he wasn’t getting every word and every phrase edited and corrected and changed BY EVERYBODY in the WHY building?
Love it, but I would add “my” to the categories. Obama likes to imagine that the government belongs to him, and will often say things like “I have directed my Secretary of Defense to, etc.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.