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Just finished watching NBC News’ two hour special Inside The Obama White House. Including the Cairo speech, that makes for 3 hours of Obama-time in less than 24 hours. If you are a sucker for the White House like me, you absolutely have to watch this. Brian Williams‘ report is extensive, insightful and successful in cramming 150 hours of footage from 32 video cameras into one concise piece. To my surprise, Rahm Emanuel is not the only Israeli angle of this broadcast, as the soundtrack includes samples of Oren Lavie’s hit ‘Her Morning Elegance’.

You can watch the entire broadcast online. Here is a quick taste:

Now, I realize the White House may have been busy with the whole FlickrGate thing these last couple of days, but can we agree posting the following photo on the official White House website was not the brightest idea?

I’m not sure if this image offends all Jews or just this one, but after 27 months and scores of Obama photos, I think this is the first photo I have seen that does not compliment him.

P.S.
Due to recent comments left on my blog, I feel I need to explain these kind of observations:
My beef is not with Obama, as he is free to raise his hands as much as he likes.
My beef is not with White House photographer Chuck Kennedy, as he is free to take as much photos as he likes.
My beef is with the WhiteHouse.gov editor who exhibited poor judgement by posting this photo which does not flatter the president and does not convey the right sentiments towards his constituents.

ViralVideoChart.com collects viewing and linking data on videos posted online and tries to quantify how fast they spread in order to identify the newest memes. This is how their chart looks right now, a couple of hours after President Bush dodged shoes thrown by Iraqi journalist poet:

Israel’s national poet, Hayyim Nahman Bialik, pondered about the first thief in Tel-Aviv as a symbolic sign of Israel joining the League of Nations. Moshe Katsav, the 8th President of Israel, had sexually harassed and even raped numerous women over the years, according to the Israeli Attorney General. Katsav was scheduled today to plead guilty to lesser charges in a plea bargain, effectively closing this disgraceful chapter in Israel’s history, but in a surprising turn of events he appeared before the court and rejected the plea, asking to be tried.

The plea bargain was criticized by many Israelis that felt they did not get their day in court, contesting that the President of Israel is a symbol of the state and as such these kinds of allegations cannot be swept under the rag. As a critic of the plea bargain myself, I thought I would provide the masses with a tool to express their critique in the form of a stencil, which can be put to use with some aerosol spray paint. I had been waiting for the right moment to post this online, but the right moment never seems to arrive. Today, as we are on the brink of a new low in the pages of history, as we have many months, possibly years, before this matter is resolved, today seems like a good day to publish this post.

Here is a low resolution version of my stencil, with Katsav’s face and the Hebrew pun ‘My Rapist – The President’:

For your downloading pleasure, I have provided a link to a high resolution image ready to print:
My Rapist - The President (320.57 KB)
Feel free to link directly to the original post on my blog, but do not link directly to the file.

Here is a tutorial on preparing stencils for use, courtesy of the Stencil Revolution.