The star studded cast includes current “Not Ready for Prime Time” players Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph as Barack and Michelle Obama; as well as past players Will Ferrell as George W. Bush, Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, Dan Aykroyd as Jimmy Carter, and Chevy Chase as Gerald Ford (in addition to Carrey and Carvey as Reagan and Bush respectively.)

Writing for Huffington Post, Ryan Grim reports:

Hollywood isn’t generally known for precisely timed or well-defined campaigns aimed at specific legislative language as bills move through Congress. But the clip, directed by Ron Howard and written by Adam McKay and Al Jean, was produced in coordination with Americans for Financial Reform, a major pro-reform coalition based in Washington, and it hits just as Senate negotiators work toward a compromise on the CFPA in the Banking Committee.

The most recent compromise proposal being discussed by Committee Chairman Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) and two Republicans — Sens. Richard Shelby of Alabama and Bob Corker of Tennessee — would house the consumer protection agency inside the Federal Reserve and limit its authority.

Senate liberals reacted coolly to the proposal. Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) went so far as to say he’d introduce his own version as an amendment on the Senate floor if Dodd doesn’t come through with a strong, independent agency.

This is the second notable reunion video on Funny or Die directed by Ron Howard with political impact. You may recall pro-Obama video in which he reprised his roles as Opie Taylor and Ron Cunningham in an effort to help Obama become president.

The cover story itself documented a roundtable discussion assessing Obama’s first six months in office, and featured heavy hitter panelists David Gergen, Paul Krugman and Michael Moore. But the article itself has merited very little mention in the mainstream medai. Instead, all of the buzz has been about the cover.

Putting Obama on a magazine cover is so commonplace that its rarely considered newsworthy these days. But a new illustration by Fairey, who gained international fame for his wildly copied “Hope” image for Obama’s presidential campaign, is beginning to get people’s notice. The lede for many articles is the somber expression in the president’s face — meant by the artist to evoke the gravity of today’s political circumstances and issues. But where some have seen it as an appropriate take, others have noticed a hidden agenda.

The New York Daily News was first to point out the deified image:

Artist Shepard Fairey, whose iconic HOPE campaign poster of Barack Obama was a global sensation, is back with a new image that both questions and deifies the President. Appearing on the cover of the Aug. 20 Rolling Stone, the portrait depicts Obama with a brow knit in determination, surrounded by a halo of stars.

But Fairey didn’t take too kindly to that description, defending his illustration and how its been received by the media so far:

It’s been six-plus months since Obama took office, and the Rolling Stone cover is the first image of Obama I’ve created in that time. As a candidate, his vision and his message of shared civic duty were inspiring, but as president he faces an unbelievable pressure to accomplish what he set out to do, despite the reality that he can’t do it alone. Much like my “Hope” image was intended to express his vision and his intellectual diligence, I also wanted this new image to convey his focus, but with the added weight and stress of responsibility. Whether media like the New York Daily News are looking to fan conservative flames with “liberals think Obama is the messiah” talking points, or just saying things like that to create juicy headlines, it should be obvious that this image is not about anything divine, but about dealing with the real world job at hand. While he is undoubtedly our leader, the question I placed inside the presidential seal “Will he take bold action or compromise too easily?” is one that I think we all need to ask about ourselves and what we’re doing to work toward what we believe in. The pitfalls of “politics as usual” aren’t reserved for politicians.

This is not the first time that Rolling Stone covers featuring Barack Obama have received attention for their editorial take, and it probably won’t be the last. Suffice it to say that it’s likely fodder for primetime discussion on at least one cable news network, which would be a big victory for the editorial team at Rolling Stone.

Previous Obama Covers on Rolling Stone:

March 20, 2008:

July 10, 2008:

October 15, 2008:

Howard Kurtz reports in today’s Washington Post that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel pressured the corporate CEO’s of the parent companies of TV networks to run Obama’s press conference during prime time, instead of communicating directly with the network heads themselves. Bob Iger (CEO of ABC’s parent company Disney), Jeffrey Immlet (CEO of NBC’s parent company GE), and Les Moonves (CEO of CBS, which includes CBS Network among other media outlets) all received calls from Emanuel in a plea to broadcast President Obama’s recent health care focused press conference, despite the hit their networks might take in the ratings.

Given the tough advertising climate, network heads are loathe to keep giving free airtime to White House, which Kurtz reports cost a total of $40 Million in lost ad revenue over the year.  While Emanuel’s efforts to contact the corporate CEOs may have been successful, it didn’t make the network executives lives any easier:

Whether this amounted to undue pressure or plain old Chicago arm-twisting, Emanuel got results: the fourth hour of lucrative network time for his boss in six months. But network executives have been privately complaining to White House officials that they cannot afford to keep airing these sessions in the current economic downturn.

The networks “absolutely” feel pressured, says Paul Friedman, CBS’s senior vice president: “It’s an enormous financial cost when the president replaces one of those prime-time hours. The news divisions also have mixed feelings about whether they are being used.”

The complete article is a fascinating read that details how GE’s Immelt told Emanuel that it was NBC head Jeff Zucker’s decision, but that Emanuel’s “subsequent call to Zucker yielded an agreement that NBC would provide live coverage.”

Coming off the heels of the NY Times report of a “truce” brokered between Immelt and Rupert Murdoch (CEO of News Corp, parent of Fox) there appears to be new-found awareness of corporate interference with the editorial decisions at the networks. If what Kurtz reports to be true is true — and really, there is no reason to doubt him — we should never let corporate heads tell us they don’t have an impact on their coverage. Because there is a growing list of evidence that indicates otherwise.