{"id":411598,"date":"2026-05-04T17:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T17:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/411598\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T17:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T17:42:08","slug":"barack-obama-does-not-want-to-be-jon-stewart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/411598\/","title":{"rendered":"Barack Obama Does Not Want to be Jon Stewart"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tIn a new profile <\/a>for The New Yorker, former President Barack Obama<\/a> digs into the \u201cdifficult\u201d media environment that the world faces today, making it clear that he does not want to be a frequent commentator on hot-button issues, while revealing that he spends less time than people might think on projects at Higher Ground Productions, his film and TV studio. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe New Yorker estimates that the Obamas\u2019 net worth \u201ccertainly reaches nine figures\u201d thanks to their deals with Netflix, Spotify, Audible, as well as their book sales and speeches.<\/p>\n

\n\tObama told The New Yorker\u2019s Peter Slevin that if he responded to every outrageous thing that President Trump says or does, it would dilute the influence and impact that he has as a former President.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cFor me to function like Jon Stewart, even once a week, just going off, just ripping what was happening \u2014 which, by the way, I\u2019m glad Jon\u2019s doing it \u2014 then I\u2019m not a political leader, I\u2019m a commentator,\u201d Obama told Slevin. \u201cThe media environment is so difficult that people don\u2019t even know all the stuff I am doing, right?\u201d he said. \u201cAnd, I think, when they do see me, then the sense is Well, why isn\u2019t he doing that every day instead of just during a midterm election, or during a referendum campaign around gerrymandering, or what have you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tInstead, Obama has made a strategic choice to pick and choose when and where he speaks, a move that his longtime advisor David Plouffe says is meant to be effective in today\u2019s media environment.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPeople who are going to be decisive in elections going forward do not seek out information about politics \u2014 they encounter it,\u201d said Plouffe. \u201cObama will talk about things, and there will be video clips that are interesting to people, because it\u2019s not like a droning on in a political speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe former president also revealed that he only spends about 10 percent of his time on Higher Ground Productions, which has a deal with Netflix (for now), in some cases taking the time to send notes to the director or creative team. It may be less time than some in Hollywood think, where the cadence of projects is a corollary to relevance.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe\u2019s forceful and direct but always calm,\u201d Working director Caroline Suh said. \u201cHe was very respectful of the fact that this is what we all do for a living.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd Obama responded to a meme shared by President Trump earlier this year that depicted the former president and his wife as apes by brushing it off.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t take it personally,\u201d Obama said. \u201cI mean, I\u2019m always offended when my wife and kids get dragged into things, because they didn\u2019t choose this. . . . That\u2019s a line that even people whose politics I deeply reject, I would expect them to care about. I would never talk about somebody\u2019s family in that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI mean, I\u2019m a fair target in the sense of, yeah, you can feel free to pick on me, because I\u2019m your own size,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a new profile for The New Yorker, former President Barack Obama digs into the \u201cdifficult\u201d media environment…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[8881,430,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-411598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-barack-obama","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}