On Friday, former President Barack Obama spoke for an hour to an audience of hundreds of people at a major sports policy conference at MIT, but his remarks were off-the-record and kept completely secret by virtually all attendees, who had to agree that they would not record, photograph, tweet, or report on the event before being granted a seat in the audience. Reason obtained a recording of the speech, however, and the most newsworthy thing about it is the simple fact that the public wasn’t supposed to hear it.
In his remarks, Obama expressed concern that Americans have segregated themselves into two “entirely different realities” where not just opinions but basic facts are in dispute, claimed to have left office without a major “embarrassing” scandal, and proved that he really loves basketball.
Those were some of the highlights from his talk at MIT’s Sloan Sports Analytics Conference on Friday. The event, attended by hundreds of sports industry professionals, journalists, and students, was cloaked in secrecy. Having listened to the entire thing, I’m not sure what all the secrecy was about—it was pretty standard Obama fare, and he never once said the word Trump, though Obama did seem to imply that his White House was remarkably drama-free in contrast. Here are five key takeaways:
1) Obama thinks Google, Facebook, etc., are “a public good as well as a commercial enterprise,” and should consider whether they are corroding our democracy.
AAN Staff
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