by interns Bella Gerard & Caitlin Ouano
Photo credit: Bella Gerard
“I have a question that I’ve never asked before and I will never ask again,” said Politico‘s Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen on Friday, a silence falling over the crowd. “How does the White House taste?”
“Kid President” Robby Novak, age ten, told the audience at Politico’s Playbook Celebrity Breakfast at Woolly Mammoth Theatre about the time he went to meet President Obama and began to lick the walls of the White House. A YouTube sensation, “Kid President” elicited laughter with every charming, cute and yet poignant response he made to the questions posed to him by Allen.
Mike Allen and Robby Novak
Joanna Coles, Cosmopolitan Editor-in-Chief, and Mike Allen interviewed ‘Scandal‘ stars Jeff Perry (Cyrus Beene) and Dan Bucatinsky (James Novak), along with real-life counterparts Andy Card and Dee Dee Myers, to an audience of over two hundred.
The first panel included Novak, Brad Montague, Novak’s brother-in-law who produces the YouTube channel, and YouTube head of content and business operations Robert Kyncl.
“We’ve always as a family made things together,” said Montague, “and this was something we were making that connected with a lot more people than we anticipated.”
Kyncl agreed that while there is no specific formula for YouTube videos to go viral, what is so great about the “Kid President” videos is that “he is really pouring his heart into it and what you’re starting to see is that people are not only entertaining but also trying to do a lot of good through YouTube.”
While some of the tough questions were for Montague and Kyncl, Novak was asked questions like his favorite moment as “Kid President,” what his favorite foods were, etc. His responses, while cute and funny, were a reminder to us what truly can matter at times. Barely able to reach the chair, feet swinging in the seat, the kid was truly a bright and shining presence for the audience.
When asked about his commonly said phrase, ‘Don’t stop believing, unless your dream is stupid,’ “Kid President” replied, “You gotta read the dream!” after jokingly asking if he pulled that line from Shakespeare.
As all four people left the stage, a fashionable woman entered and found herself on the stage alone, wondering aloud, “Well, I don’t know where the other moderator went, but I’m Joanna Coles.” With elegance and a glowing, sharp disposition, she captured our attention right away.
Joanna Coles
After what is summarized as “several cappuccinos and an exploding espresso machine in the Four Seasons foyer,” Coles impressed the audience with both her humor and poise, as she and Allen talked briefly about her success during her past eighteen months as Editor-in-Chief.
Allen congratulated Coles on Cosmo’s latest award which she received the night prior – a National Society of Magazine Editors award for a twelve-page spread educating readers on contraception.
Mike Allen and Joanna Coles
“I just can’t believe how politicized women’s health and reproductive rights have become,” said Coles on the subject of contraception, adding that one of her goals in taking over Cosmo as Editor-in-Chief was to provide good, accurate information on what she refers to as the ‘flip side of the fun of having sex.’”
When asked where the magazine receives the most slack for its racy covers, Coles admits that they receive the most complaints from Walmart shoppers. “Apparently, Walmart customers don’t have sex,” she quipped, then immediately added with a tinge of her signature dry humor, “But I do understand that, because I’m British, and British people don’t have sex either!”
Allen then displayed a copy of one of the magazine’s latest issues and read one of the many headlines which advertised ‘blow your mind’ sex tips, winning him a chorus of laughter from both Coles and the audience.
“Hopefully, you should read a copy of Cosmo and feel reinvigorated about your life,” says Coles with sincerity.
From there, the interviewee joined Allen as interviewer as they introduced Scandal stars Jeff Perry and Dan Bucatinsky, along with their real-life counterparts, former White House Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers and Former White House Chief-of-Staff Andrew Card Jr.
Dee Dee Meyers and Andy Card
Coles first asked about how much truth there is in Scandal’s roots about ambition, power and knowledge, to which Myers replied that while the plot lines are outrageous, “It’s a lot about power and who controls it and who controls the information. I do think that aligns with how people think about Washington and how it works in this day and age.”
The conversation then went on a tangent about Card Jr.’s patriotic socks before Jeff Perry asked the two “counter-parts” about their thoughts about working at the White House and whether the Chief of Staff-press secretary dynamic was real.
“I actually think the Press Secretary’s job is one of the most difficult jobs at the White House because the Press Secretary ends up being an unwelcome presence in most environments—“
“Hear, hear,” joked Bucatinsky, whose press-secretary character is killed off on Scandal.
Card then described the realities of his job where he got himself into a pickle. He noted that there were times he “made the conscious decision not to tell the President something.” Allen and Coles then jumped, asking him if he had any regrets, what kinds of things the President of the United States did not know, and was this a mistake. In the end, Card really saved himself by clarifying that “the President makes presidential decisions, not government decisions…bureaucrats and others try to push decisions into the White House that don’t belong there.”
“Okay, now let’s turn to a real White House Chief of Staff Jeff Perry,” joked Allen as he turned to the actor and asked him questions from the audience about the show. Perry gave numerous comical answers about his character, Cyrus Beene’s, personal decision making, even exclaiming “I told that damn Scott Foley, get rid of Sally Langston, she’s cray cray”.
The rest of the interview, which can be found online, touched on the problems of dealing with the President and other government administrators being human beings, making human decisions, just like us. They found that the craziness of Scandal may not be so far from the truth in terms of relationships and power struggles.
Towards the end of the interview, two other audience members were revealed to be stars of Scandal, Huck and Quinn (actors Guillermo Diaz and Katie Lowes), visiting Washington, D.C for the first time.
“You’re not going to assassinate anyone while you’re here are you?” joked Joanna.
The actors of the creative world contrasted with the real life White House workers brought a lot of truth and humor to the personal side of politics.
“One of the things I love that Shondra did in creating Scandal was to understand how spousal the relationship is between the Chief of Staff and the President,” said Bucatinsky in response to Card’s description of his job reading the President’s moods and keeping him happy. “It’s riveting. I find it so interesting,” said Bucatinsky.
Meet “Kid President”
