Obama Shocks Racists in Fascinating Podcast
KTB on President Obama’s WTF Podcast interview
I’m a regular listener to the WTF podcast by Marc Maron because, duh, I do standup comedy and like long-form conversations. When I heard that Maron landed POTUS for a talk, my curiosity was piqued.
Would Maron make it about himself? Would he somehow bring up Lorne Michaels (as he is apt to do)? Will he bemoan the fact that he hasn’t had enough Black presidents on?
Obama on WTF Podcast with Marc Maron
Marc Maron used to work in liberal talk radio (LOL), but in recent years has pointedly moved away from subjects like politics and social justice because he feels it brings out the anger in him in a way that is just not fun for people to watch. And now, he says, that is what he is most concerned with that people have a good time when he puts on a show.
So, would he ask any worthwhile questions?
But more importantly, what conclusions can I jump to about the President from this hour long chat? Let’s find out.
Within five minutes, the president calls Maron narcissistic for all the pictures of himself (drink!). Maron responds by asking whether he should keep a book he’s had for 30 years but hasn’t read. POTUS says, hey, it may be just the book you need in 2 years.
Is Obama a secret hoarder?
Obama’s Early Life
We find out Obama “tried on” various personas as a young man, experimenting with how society viewed him, from Shaft to Pryor. This spurred him into a self-reflection that inspired him to transfer from Occidental College in California to Columbia University in New York.
He calls his mother “the last of the great secular humanists.” And says they never fought. He talked a bit about being Black man who didn’t need to disown the white side of his family. He used to think his mom’s family values were corny, but came around to them being aspirational in his early 20s.
Marc brings the conversation back to himself and his former political life, summing it up as “I ran the country from my couch for a couple years.”
Then the conversation turns toward the Charleston shooting, and POTUS is fairly frank, if measured, about it.
First he addresses guns, emphasizing that this issue is something specific to the United States. He respects people who are gun hobbyists, he gets that it is a part of people’s lives, but wants common sense provisions in order to prevent tragedies. He calls out the NRA for pushing against what most well-intentioned Americans really want.
Where Obama Gets It Wrong
POTUS claims that regular people do not say “Oh I don’t like this person because they’re Republican. Real people don’t do that.”
Well, Obama has obviously never met my parents, because with my family I married a Black man with little-to-no-pushback, but if he’d have been Republican I would have been disowned.
My mother, who has lived in this country for 27 years but refuses to become a citizen because she “can’t renounce her Canadianness” does this about celebrities. Do you know Dean Cain is a Republican? And Drew Carey? My mom does.
Back to Barack, who says he still has faith in the American people and I am like, really?? Ok.
The Tough Questions?
Obama is his typical moderate self and Marc Maron is not in a place in his life to be like,
“YOU’RE BEING INADEQUATELY RADICAL!” or “WHAT ABOUT DRONES, MAN?”
But what we do get is Maron asking, “Don’t you get furious?!”
“No, no, not really…Sandy Hook, that was the closest I came to feeling disgusted.”
Obama describes himself, “It is accurate to say that I believe in reason, I believe in facts.”
But I’m not here for that, I want to hear the Prez talk about racism! Come on, make people clutch those pearls!
RACISM!
“Racism, we are not cured of. It’s not just a matter of it not being polite to say n-!”
Um, wait can I quote the president here? Should we censor?
Right now Piers Morgan is on Twitter advocating putting white people in jail who use the N-word. Which really puts me in a bind because if no one can ever say it, then what am I supposed to say when I am called slurs? That they called me an ‘n-word’-lover? Makes it seem like I like the N-word, which is categorically untrue. It’s just getting too hard!
Obama continues, saying really reasonable stuff about how we’ve made a lot of progress on racial equality in just his lifetime but,
“Societies don’t completely erase everything that happened just 200-300 years prior.”
We Live In The Future
Maron- “What do you do for fun?!”
Obama says hanging out with his kids. Obama talks about his father. How Michelle is a stickler for punctuality.
They end with Marc looking for validation, “Did we do good?” and finally “Do you like comedy?” (Obama loves it.)
“Who are your guys?” Pryor, Dick Gregory, Louis CK.
You guys, Presidents doing podcasts. We live in the future.
