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August 19, 2011

iPrez

By Michael Shaw

From the recent batch of new pics on the WH Flickr site, the caption reads:

Vice President Joe Biden and President Barack Obama look at an app on an iPhone in the Outer Oval Office, Saturday, July 16, 2011.

Self-identified as change agents, weren’t Obama and Biden, themselves, supposed to embody the “new new thing?”  Here, however, it feels the White House seeks to borrow a buzz of energy and cred — in this case (in a caption that  actually ID’s the product, in a photo that feels more like a magazine ad), showing how down they are with the tech gadget.

(photo: Pete Souza)

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  • KVA

    Product placement in the White House Flickr feed . . . that’s one way to pay down the national debt . . .

  • Gasho

    Apple is an American company (even though the products are built elsewhere) and this photo is much less about the technology than the moment.  It looks like 2 people at work sharing a funny picture — maybe someone’s daughter making a great face or whatever.. they look like colleagues.

  • guest1

    This is the kind of interaction I see between people all the time now.  The ladies in our needlepoint group are constantly showing each other pictures of our vacations or grandchildren or looking up new stitch patterns on our iPhones or other smartphones.  It would be a George HW Bush moment when he was in the grocery store and had never seen a scanner if Obama and Biden weren’t able to use and enjoy a smartphone.  

  • Gasho

    Maybe the iPhone is a distraction; maybe the real question is – have the photographers on OUR end of the camera started capturing these two in looser clothes? Could it not be the first echo of a retirement meme hitting the media? Biden especially looks like he’s reminiscing and is perfectly suited for the links. Can you make out a little cigar smoke lingering by the window?

    Beyond the retirement trial balloon, the photo gives us a slightly defocused view of the Oval Office.  Remember how W had like, nothing, on his desk sometimes?  Here’s the Prez with stickies on his monitor and a Mad Men style secretary-in-the-office thing going on there in the back — and she’s got 2 stickies on her monitor.  This is a working office!  Other than that I see modest flowers and some hand sanitizer in a green bottle that could be from Walgreens.  Michelle herself might have put that on his desk, he is working at the home office after all.  That makes up for the secretary.  Oh, and Biden has a wicked watch – like all lazer-hands in the middle CIA kinda watch. Very casual.

  • T Perky

    The only thing to me that seems forced is the caption. Do people “look at an app?” Obama and Biden have always been comfortable with each other, I think. And they laugh a lot.  To me, the two are wearing weekend clothes, but it’s a working weekend. Biden’s showing off pics of his grandkids before heading to the next meeting.

    [weren’t Obama and Biden, themselves, supposed to embody the “new new thing?”]

    They did, almost 3 years ago. That’s the thing about new, it gets old faster and faster as “new” cycles get shorter and shorter due to our dwindling attentions spans. If the old thing wants to stay cool, it has to embrace the new new new thing for the reflected glamour. Remember Bush on (and then off) the Segway? Now that I think of it, didn’t Biden extol the virtues of Angry Birds once? If so, this photo’s totally in character.

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