Worth It: Obama Subjects Himself to ‘Between Two Ferns’
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My first thought when confronted with President Barack Obama showing up on Zach Galifianakis’ talk show, “Between Two Ferns,” was not charitable. Doesn’t the president have better things to do with his time than, once again, sucking up to Gen Xers and Millennials for some cool cred? You know who’s not impressed by cool cred? Vladimir Putin. So unimpressed is he that his response to America’s strongly worded condemnations about Crimea has basically been, “Yadda yadda yadda” then sending more Russian troops to take over more Ukrainian military bases.
My second thought was that the episode was hilarious. Regardless of the wisdom of a sitting president showing up on a Funny or Die web series to suffer the abuse of Galifianakis’ not-so-bright host, the show started off funny. Even if you’ve grown weary of the “Between Two Ferns” schtick — celebrities show up and are asked a number of insulting questions — it works rather well here, mostly because Galifianakis doesn’t completely pull his punches. (One of the ongoing issues with “Saturday Night Live” is that the show will make fun of things near the president, but rarely skewers him.)
At the start of the show, Galifianakis apologizes for canceling a few times and stumbles over the president’s name. Meanwhile, the text identifying Obama reads: “Barack Obama (sp?) Community Organizer.” He goes on to ask what it’s like to be “the last black president” and “Where are you planning on building your presidential library? In Hawaii or your home country of Kenya?”
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