by WorldTribune Staff, May 7, 2021
The man who vowed to “fundamentally transform America” sure does place a lot of value on the entertainment industry.
Former president Barack Obama’s political tentacles reach into multiple outlets of popular culture in America today, from movies to music, books to amusement parks.
And now you can add professional sports to the list. The National Football League has hired former Obama personal aide Katie Hill as its new Senior Vice President of Communications.
“Hill joins the NFL from former President Barack Obama's family office, where she served as President Obama's Communications Director for the last four years,” a league statement released this week declares.
The NFL’s move continues the outright alignment with progressive globalist establishment forces occurring in the world of big-time sports today. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver became a member of the Board of Trustees for the notorious Rockefeller Foundation last summer, and the league’s Chief Marketing Officer, Kate Jhaveri, also serves “as secretary of the national board for Planned Parenthood Action Fund,” as her official NBA bio states.
The commissioners of all four major professional sports, the NFL, NBA, NHL and Major League Baseball, are affiliated with the progressive establishment Paley Center for Media.
The Center has received funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations and has pledged its commitment to promoting racial justice and social change.
It also represents the creation of another spoke in the ever-expanding Obama entertainment wheel.
Obama is a dominant presence at video streaming service goliath Netflix. Barack and Michelle Obama signed a lucrative production deal with the company in 2018 that was designed to allow them to “work on scripted and unscripted series as well as docu-series, documentary films, and features,” Hollywood trade publication Variety reported at the time.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings is a major Democratic donor and Co-CEO and Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos and his wife Nicole Avant were “top-tier” Obama campaign bundlers, “raising more than half a million dollars in one night,” The Hollywood Reporter noted in 2012.
Former Obama administration national security adviser Susan Rice served on the Board of Directors for Netflix from 2018 until exiting to take a job with the Biden administration in 2021.
The Obamas have a major toehold in the book publishing industry as well, thanks to the mammoth deal the couple signed with powerhouse Penguin Random House in 2017. The joint book deal was reported to be worth as much as a whopping $65 million.
The Obamas are also deeply involved in the music industry via tight relations with audio streaming titan Spotify. In 2019, they reached a multi-year podcasting deal with the company.
“President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are two of the world’s most important voices, and it is a privilege to be working with them to identify and share stories that will inspire our global audience, which looks to Spotify for unique, breakthrough content,” Spotify’s chief content officer Dawn Ostroff said at the time.
Further cementing the relationship is the announcement in February that former Obama deputy chief of staff for policy Mona Sutphen would be joining Spotify’s Board of Directors.
The reasons cited by the music streaming business for the move are revealing.
“Mona has built a career in both the private and public sectors advising leaders on international and U.S. domestic policy, technology, macroeconomics and trade, and human rights... and that’s just the tip of the iceberg,” Daniel Ek, Spotify Founder, CEO and Chairman of the Board, said in a statement. “Mona will bring a new and highly valuable perspective to the Board as we focus on driving our strategy forward during this time of exceptional change around the world.”
Former Obama administration U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman, who spearheaded Obama’s failed attempts to tie America to the globalist Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership deal, sits on the Board of Directors of entertainment heavyweight Disney. Froman is a longtime personal friend of former Obama dating to their time together as Harvard Law School students in the 1980s.
With the appointment of his former personal aide to an executive position at the most prominent professional sports league in America, Barack Obama has gotten his fingers into yet another core U.S. entertainment pie.
The transformation of a nation isn’t merely accomplished on a political dais. It is a mutli-faceted effort utilizing every means possible to profoundly change a culture and a society.
