In January, at a presidential debate in Los Angeles before an audience packed with showbiz types, Barack Obama was asked whether he thought there was “too much sex and violence coming out of Hollywood.”
Obama’s response grounded, measured, real was an early indication that he knew how to speak from his own personal experience directly to the daily dilemmas of millions of parents. If Bill Clinton famously promised that “I feel your pain,” Obama’s message to parents was, in effect, “I feel your anxiety.” It was easy to picture him utilizing his bully pulpit on their behalf once he became Dad-in-Chief.
Obama rejected censorship, emphasizing that parents bear primary responsibility. He talked about giving them “technologies and tools” so they can monitor what their children watch on TV and see on the Web. At this point, the assembled Hollywood honchos were probably stifling yawns and assuming they were off the hook. But then Obama added pointedly: “I don’t mean to be insulting here, but I do think that it is important for those in the industry to show some thought about who they are marketing some of these programs that are being produced to.
Obama’s answer revealed that he understands a fundamental truth: Today, the bad stuff comes at kids from all directions. At that moment, I’m guessing, there were a lot of parents saying to themselves: “This guy gets it.” The “gets it” factor doesn’t show up in polls the way, say, the economy or the Iraq war does. But it’s huge. Whenever he weighed in on a cultural issue during the campaign, Obama seemed to occupy the sensible center. He catered neither to the neo-puritans who wave the banner of “family values” nor to the hipper-than-thou types who sneer at the idea of any filter or any restraint. And I’ll bet it helped push him over the top.
“He crosses that nice line of being viewed as a generational peer - he speaks in the vernacular of the young; he’s mastered technology - but at the same time he makes it very clear that he’s very devoted to his family,” says social historian Barbara Dafoe Whitehead. “He can be kind of a young father, which we haven’t had in the White House since Jack Kennedy. It’s an interesting sort of double persona.”
James Steyer, the CEO and founder of Common Sense Media, a nonprofit organization that offers guidance to parents on children’s entertainment, says that because both Obamas are engaged parents, they have the lived knowledge and the credibility to convey credible and nuanced messages. “That’s a huge deal, priceless, the ability of Barack and Michelle Obama to be role models about smart media behavior and using common sense and setting limits,” Steyer said. “Parents need some bailing out on the media side, but there’s no cost to this bailout of parents. This one is free.”
At the moment, of course, the president-elect has more urgent matters on his plate. He has the aforementioned economy to fix and the aforementioned war to end. But at a minimum, parenthood in the Age of Obama will come with this guarantee, articulated by Whitehead: “All parents with kids at home will have an ally in the White House. That’s really refreshing.”
