President Obama's Cairo speech sparked a number of interesting reactions, but Steve Benen notes this oddity from Richard Cohen--he denounced the president for failing to denounce anti-Semitism. But Obama did--in pretty unequivocal language. Cohen could not have misunderstood those words, so he must have missed that section. Similarly, I noticed that some commentators claimed Obama did not extoll democracy--he did. At some length.
He spoke at even greater length yesterday. On the NBC Evening News, Brian Williams twice labeled it the president's "longest" speech, the NYT qualified that by saying it was one of his longest speeches, the Huffington Post noted that it was lengthy and so on and so forth. It was roughly 50 minutes long. It was a length of a typical MWF college class. But the media commentary pretty much implied that the experience made them feel as if they had joined Lance Armstrong on the Tour de France.
So, what do these two paragraphs suggest? This president assumes that journalists possess an attention span as long as college students. Looks like he blew that call.
You're assuming, of course, that college students have the attention span for a 50-minute class.
Posted by: JL | June 16, 2009 at 08:55 AM