Seriously? Obama Picks Now to Yuk It Up on 'Ferns'?

Kathleen Parker was no fan of President Obama's Between Two Ferns interview. What with situations including "Ukraine, Crimea, Vladimir Putin, China, Russia, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, North Korea or other trouble spots, never mind a missing airplane," this seems like far from an ideal time for the president to sit down with a comedian and be asked ridiculous questions about pardoning turkeys, she writes in the Washington Post. Sure, Obama was trying to promote HealthCare.gov, but he must remember that "he’s the leader of the free world, parts of which are under siege." Not to mention the fact that things like this interview are just "silly" and "beneath the dignity of the office."

Of course, perhaps Obama was trying to make a point aimed at Putin: "How better to insult a shirtless, pec-flexing thug than to engage in a theater of the absurd? How better to display maximum disrespect toward a man with a child’s ego and a nuclear arsenal—who has invaded another country where peaceful demonstrators were gunned down—than by acting as though he hasn’t a care in the world? Brilliant," she writes. But over at New York, Jonathan Chait is tired of all the "worried harrumphing" that Obama may have hurt "the dignity of the presidency." "Why is it the role of the press to worry that the president is coming across too much like an equal citizen and not enough like a monarch?" he writes. Click for his full column, or Parker's. (More Between Two Ferns stories.)