Pop Culture~

President Obama on The View. I love it.

There have been many criticisms of President Obama on his so-called "Pop Culture Agenda" and to me, this just makes him more my president than ever. Opponents and naysayers all complain about how he spends time on interviews with late night tv and such. People on Facebook post status messages about how he should stop making comments about sports and worry about the country. First of all, I am pretty sure being the President means that you can still have interest in things non-political. I don't remember anywhere that the Presidential Oath includes abstaining from sports. And second of all, pop culture is where current generations get their news, isn't it?

When I was growing up, here is how every single evening played out at my house. My stay-at-home mom made a sit down dinner that was almost always a meat, a potato, a veggie, and bread and butter of some variety. My dad came home from work, we ate as a family after saying grace, and then we did dishes or were banished from the living room while Mom and Dad sat down and watched the six o'clock local news, followed by World News and newspaper sharing. That was how they collected their information - how most people at that time collected their information. I am sure that many people had the same scenario play out in their homes and are nodding along with this.

Here is how my evenings play out at my house now. I go out to eat with friends, go to mom's for dinner, order in pizza, make a bowl of cereal, eat a sandwich in front of the tv, skip dinner and go out to play cards, grab a happy meal through the drive thru during errand running, or something else completely random for dinner depending on the day. About half of the time I come home and/or finish dinner and run laundry on the commercial breaks of my favorite tv shows or in between chapters of a bestseller. The other half of the time I don't come home until it is time to go to sleep. There is no sitting down with the paper or a news anchor.

Instead, I collect the majority of my news from sources considered to be entertainment rather than hard hitting journalism. Every morning and every night before bed, I go online. I check my email, scroll through my home page that is loaded up with current headlines, go on Facebook, update myself on all the blogs I follow...and most evenings I check out my DVR to watch Hot Topics on The View and see who is on late night tv - in addition to my mindless reality tv shows of course. (Which have nothing to do with news in any way.) For me, having a President that understands that times have changed is a positive thing, a sign that he understands how people of my generation gather their information. Do I want him doing daytime television all the time? Of course not. But I hardly think that one appearance next to Barbara Walters and Whoopi make him a pop culture sell-out. Just this woman's view...