Life as a Catalyst » White House

Obama: “I have never used Twitter”

Joey Alarilla — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 08:06:41 +0000

Check out my CNET Asia blog post on US President Barack Obama’s town hall meeting in Shanghai.

Here’s an excerpt.

One of the interesting things to come out of his just concluded town hall meeting in Shanghai was US President Barack Obama’s admission: “I have never used Twitter”.

Obama casually divulged this while answering a question about the Great Firewall of China in this historic town meeting between the US president and Chinese students, which was livestreamed by the White House, with a discussion on Facebook via Facebook Connect.

Read the full story.

Obama calls Kanye West ‘jackass’: ‘Off the record’ in the age of Twitter

Joey Alarilla — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 08:35:52 +0000

Here’s an excerpt from my latest CNET Asia blog post.

Most people would probably agree with what US President Barack Obama called singer Kanye West after the latter ruined Taylor Swift’s moment at the MTV Video Music Awards.

Obama’s “jackass” comment, however, was supposed to be off the record, but it ended up on Twitter (the post has since been taken down). This once again shows the impact of New Media and microblogging tools such as Twitter on mainstream media and the rules that have governed traditional media coverage. In fact, the incident is provoking a debate on standards for journalism in the age of Twitter.

Read the full story.

Spoiler alert: Videos of Shaquille O’Neal vs The Big Show on Monday Night Raw

Joey Alarilla — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:41:32 +0000

Stop reading if you haven’t seen this week’s Monday Night Raw and don’t want spoilers.

The moment it was announced that National Basketball Association superstar Shaquille O’Neal of the Cleveland Cavaliers was going to be the guest host on World Wrestling Entertainment’s Monday Night Raw, you had to know he was going to square off against “the world’s largest athlete,” The Big Show.

Well, Raw didn’t disappoint, and Shaq, a huge pro wrestling fan (in more ways than one, heh), was very entertaining and looked like he felt right at home. Maybe we’ll see him involved in WrestleMania 26 next year.

Here’s a clip of the opening segment. Shaq had a hilarious confrontation with Chris Jericho, who is one half of the WWE Unified Tag Team Champions. Jericho handpicked The Big Show to be his new tag team partner at the just-concluded Night of Champions pay-per-view, to replace his original co-champion Edge, who will be sidelined for months after undergoing surgery for a torn Achilles tendon. Yup, that’s a real-life injury, not a storyline one.

And here’s the epic encounter. Will The Big Show chokeslam Shaq?

By the way, in related news, Shaq wanted to find out if he was famous enough to just go to the White House (Raw was held in Washington, D.C.) and meet US President Barack Obama without an appointment. He tweeted that he was going to try it after landing in D.C. on Sunday to host Raw the following day.

Check out this Newsweek blog to find out if Shaq was able to meet Obama.