Am I the only one who felt Jeffrey Immelt’s influence here? When President Obama proclaimed “We do big things,” my mind went to the old GE commercials “We bring good things to light.” Perhaps it was just me. But I do remember hearing that the Democrats were going to bring some Madison Avenue types in to help with their messaging. If “We do big things” is the best they can do, they need to go back to Mad Men and try again.
So much was made of the integrated seating at last night’s State of the Union address. Democrats and Republicans sitting together, oh my! The one thing it did accomplish was hesitancy among the members of the president’s party to stand up and applaud his “big things”. It almost seemed as if these 534 (Giffords’ seat was empty) had no idea what they were supposed to be in favor of!
I listened to the speech and pulled out some of the highlights to share with you in the second hour of today’s show. Will Bunch – author of The Backlash: Right-Wing Radicals, High-Def Hucksters, and Paranoid Politics in the Age of Obama and senior fellow at Media Matters live-blogged the evening on his Attytood blog at the Philadelphia Daily News, and he’ll chime in with his observations too.
In the first hour – speaking of BIG things – we’ll look at the biggest environmental disaster in US history: The BP Gulf of Mexico disaster. The amazing Naomi Klein went out on a scientific cruise with scientists from the University of South Florida, and wrote “The Search for BP’s Oil” for The Nation.
Here’s the companion video to The Nation piece… definitely worth watching!
And Naomi Klein’s recent TED talk, truly thought provoking:
I had the honor and pleasure of interviewing Naomi a couple of times for The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, and am thrilled that she’ll join me this morning to talk about the effects of the oil gusher in Gulf, long after the spewing has stopped.
Yes, it’s a BIG show today… because here in America, we do BIG things. Talk to you in a few, radio or not….