Obama vs the iPad

Barack Obama delivered the following line at a commencement address at Hampton University, a historically black college:

“You’re coming of age in a 24/7 media environment that bombards us with all kinds of content and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter,” Obama said at Hampton University, Virginia.

“With iPods and iPads and Xboxes and PlayStations, — none of which I know how to work — information becomes a distraction, a diversion, a form of entertainment, rather than a tool of empowerment, rather than the means of emancipation,” Obama said.

This has gotten a firestorm of attention but it’s actually a longtime Obama rhetorical trope. In February 2007 he told people to “turn off the TV and put down the Gameboy”. In July 2009, he said black parents need to recognize that raising kids properly “means putting away the Xbox and putting our kids to bed at a reasonable hour”. In June of that year he called for “raising our children to step away from the video games and spend more time playing outside.”

During the campaign, I believe lines like this tended to focus group very well. It strikes me as significant that the target of this scolding is often specifically an African-American audience, which speaks to the fact that one aspect of Barack Obama’s political appeal has always been that a segment of white American seems to have a deep-seated yearning to deliver a stern talk to black America but feels it would be inappropriate for them to do so and likes the idea of Obama as a black proxy. I feel like slipping the iPad—the hot yuppie gadget du jour and not something people associate with “irresponsible” minority youth—into the line is scrambling the intended message and causing it to be heard in a different light.