Was President Obama’s appearance on the Funny or Die web series Between Two Ferns a brilliant way to reach college-age viewers or was it beneath the office?
Those are just two of the questions being asked in the wake of the comedy website, co-founded by Will Ferrell, posting an episode of its talk show parody.
In it, besides taking questions from host Zach Galifianakis like, “What’s it like to be the last black president?” Obama asks young people to visit healthcare.gov, his health care act’s flagship site, which has had a rough debut.
It might have worked.
The four-minute video, which went online a week ago, jumped healthcare.gov’s traffic almost 40%, and has already gotten 19 million hits, according to a Funny or Die spokesperson Carolyn Prousky,
Christina Reynolds, managing director of media relations firm The Glover Park Group and a former Obama staffer, says when you get that many views from your target audience – in this case, college-age people – that quickly, “it’s really hard to argue that that’s not a success.”
But some prominent conservatives question the president for going on the show.
Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, who said on his show last week, “All I can tell you is, Abe Lincoln would not have done it.”
“(Obama) needs to be aware… He needs to be aware,” O’Reilly said twice, emphasizing the point, “of how his enemies perceive him. Because I believe the testing of America is just getting started.”
Mike Farah, the president of production at Funny or Die, and the executive producer of Between Two Ferns, laughs at O’Reilly’s comments.
They wanted to help the president promote the Affordable Care Act to younger people, Farah says, and the video’s been successful in doing that.
“And if the president and Putin end up talking, hey, maybe Putin will tell him, ‘Good job on video,’” Farah says. “Comedy is a great equalizer between different nationalities. Just that these serious news people are on television saying Between Two Ferns with a straight face is great.”
Zach Crenshaw, 22, a senior communications major at DePauw University in Greencastle, Ind., says the morning the video went up, all of his friends were posting it on Facebook.
“It was a smart political move,” Crenshaw says. “And it’s funny, which is the key to its success.”
Crenshaw, a Republican, didn’t visit healthcare.gov after seeing it, he says, but “it’s nice to see politicians show they have a humorous side.”
“I’d love to see what Ted Cruz would do on Between Two Ferns.”
Another student, Jenna Homen, 21, a senior psychology major at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, and political independent, agrees Obama knows how to reach college voters.
“I feel like he’s known for appealing to young adults,” Homen says. “It’s kind of how he ended up winning his campaign to begin with.”
Homen also thought the sketch was funny but admits she didn’t visit healthcare.gov either.
Her dad already signed up for her, she says.
“I’m sure that there were people who watched it and thought, ‘Like, I love Zach Galifianakis. Whatever. I’ll sign up for it.’”
Ana Navarro, a Republican strategist and television commentator, takes a middle ground.
“Candidates and people in office need to be themselves,” she said in an e-mail. “Someone who is not comfortable in a venue like (Between Two Ferns) shouldn’t do it, because it will show, and it will backfire.”
But, Navarro says, for Republicans worried about the president’s appearance on the comedy sketch: “We have many bigger fish to fry…”
Memet Walker is a senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Article source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2014/03/18/colleges-obama-funny-or-die/6573193/