Barack Obama’s New Netflix Series Shows That He Has Critiques but No Answers
While it’s always refreshing to see the lives of working people centered in our media, the docuseries Working: What We Do All Day is hampered by the limitations of its host and narrator, former president Barack Obama.
Barack Obama with Randi Williams in his new Netflix documentary, Working: What We Do All Day. (Netflix)
The Obamas have found a way to stay culturally relevant. In 2018, Barack and Michelle Obama founded Higher Ground Productions and arranged a $65 million deal with Netflix to produce documentaries and feature films.
Former President Obama has used these films to position himself as a kind of moral observer of the nation’s problems. In Our Great National Parks, for example, he narrates beautiful scenes of the country’s most famous national parks while issuing stern warnings about our duty to protect them.
Now Obama seeks to emulate a professed hero of his, writer and historian Studs Terkel. In 1974, Terkel published his iconic book Working, which featured powerful interviews with scores of ordinary working people about what they did at their jobs and how they felt about it.
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