A Fine One to Talk

Obama spoke to some political journalists.

“It’s not because around the world people have not seen crazy politics. It is that they understand America is the place where you can’t afford completely crazy politics,” he said.

  Guardian

Yeah, nobody cares whether other countries have crazy politics. They're unimportant in the grand scheme. Only America matters.

He said the media landscape has changed since his first presidential campaign in 2008, when “there was a price if you said one thing and then did something completely different”.

It apparently didn't matter in 2008, because he was re-elected in 2012. He should have gone back a little further.

“The number one question I’m getting as I travel around the world or talk to world leaders right now is, what is happening in America about our politics?” Obama said, describing international alarm over whether the United States will continue to function effectively.

Well, if by "effectively" you mean create a mess of the world's political and environmental structures, then, yes. I don't think you need to worry.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE3/30:

The last person in the world who should be lecturing journalists on how to do journalism is President Barack Obama.

[...]

What makes Obama’s speech so unstomachable is the way he praises reporters at an award ceremony by calling their work “indispensable,” “incredible,” “worth honoring” and essential to democracy while simultaneously blocking honest press queries with all the formidable energies of his office.

[...]

Under his administration, the U.S. government has set a new record for withholding Freedom of Information Act requests.Obama’s “Insider Threat Program” has turned employees across the government—from the Peace Corps to the Social Security Administration to the Department of Agriculture—into information-squelching snitches.

[...]

AP Washington Bureau Chief Sally Buzbee has decried the “day-to-day intimidation of sources” by the Obama administration, judging it worse than the Bush administration on that score.

[...]

As ProPublica has reported, at the same time the Obama administration has been paying lip service to protecting whistleblowers, it has pursued national security leaks to the press with a vehemence unmatched by any previous administration, using the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers who leak to journalists more times than all previous administrations combined.

[...]

Obama’s White House has perfected the [in-house media shop], with a 14-member operation called the White House Office of Digital Strategy that bypasses the press corps with tweets, YouTube videos, Facebook postings and more.
[...]

You’d expect this sort of contradictory behavior from Trump, whom Obama savaged (by implication) repeatedly in the speech. At one point, Obama complains about an unnamed politician (I think you can guess who) receiving billions in free media, and bemoans the fact that no “serious accountability” comes with it. But hasn’t Obama been doing the same grift from a different location for the past seven to arrange the same deal for himself?

[...]


Shame on Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications for allowing Obama—a documented opponent of the press—to pontificate on journalistic practice.

[...]

The deeper you study Obama’s relationship with the press, the more you want to ask what business he has giving out a press award. Was Trump himself busy that night?

  Politico