Jimmy Fallon landed a big interview for his last night’s episode of “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” It was such a big get, he labeled the episode the “Holy Crap Edition” in his monologue. His guest, of course, was President Barack Obama, who was looking to use the show to appeal to young voters and perhaps overshadow presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney’s election night victories.
The college-themed episode began with a song by Fallon and musical guest Dave Matthews titled “Walk of Shame,” which describes making one’s way home after a college party, wondering, “What the hell did I do last night?” and why do I have ”someone else’s pants on?” Material very worthy of the president.
Obama appeared later in the show to “SlowJam” the news with Fallon, which is a like a musical poetry reading. The president used the Slow Jam to tell young people about his quest to make sure interest rates on student loans don’t double from 3 to 6 percent in the only way they would understand – through song.
He attacked Republicans and offered a false choice between his plan to keep their rates low or the Republican plan to “make it work” while refusing to tax billionaires. No word yet on how taxing billionaires keeps student interest rates at 3 percent.
Obama finished the segment with a deep-voiced “oh yeah” so we would know he was very serious about the whole thing.
But the president wasn’t done yet. As he sat down with Fallon for the interview, he called the White House a “rental” (Mitt Romney, call your office) and told an embarrassing story about leaving an event at the White House too early, only to have to turn around and make the same entrance again.
Obama and Fallon then moved to actually talking about issues (in case the singing didn’t work) and like clockwork, the topic of education and student loans came up.
The president cast himself as the candidate who supports education, all because he doesn’t want to Stafford student loan interest rates to return to their original level. He conveniently never mentioned that he missed the votes for the original rate drop while he was in the Senate or the fact that his opponent, Mitt Romney, also supports that idea.
Obama likely accomplished what he set out to do on Late Night by pandering yet again to young voters across the country. (Although no clear numbers exist as to how many young people actually watch Jimmy Fallon’s show, which comes on at 1am EST/10pm PST.)
To the informed viewer, Obama didn’t come off as very presidential. He averted the facts and obviously pandered to young voters. But more uniformed voters probably ate his performance right up, which is all he really cared about anyway.
