Blog: Local YouTuber connects with Michelle Obama

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Springfield YouTuber interviews Michelle Obama

It’s not every day you get to dance with the former first lady of the United States.

But that’s one thing local book-reviewing YouTuber Jesse George can check off his bucket list after recently participating in an interview panel with Michelle Obama.

George, along with fellow YouTuber Kat O'Keeffe, busted a move with Obama on set at Google’s Austin campus last month, after O'Keeffe asked the first lady to do her “go-to dance move.” The video, “A Discussion with Michelle Obama” for YouTube Originals, was released yesterday. It features interview questions from George and other content creators who are part of a group collectively known as BookTube.

“I don’t know that I have a move. It’s more the lips. The face is just as important,” said Obama, while snapping and gesticulating.

In the video (see below), Obama promoted her recently released book, “Becoming.”

After a brief intro by Springfield resident George, in which he said “my palms are sweaty and my knees are shaking,” the YouTuber asked Obama about her favorite book and whether she had special memories tied to it.

“One of my favorite books in the whole world is Toni Morrison’s ‘Song of Solomon,’” Obama said, recalling “the words, the story, the characters” and also how she used the wisdom of other authors for her own book.

“If I think of how I wanted the stories to come out, I think of the storytellers I love,” Obama told George.

Springfield Business Journal last month caught up with George on the day of the video shoot.

“I never imagined that it would grow to the scale that it currently is at,” he said of his YouTube channel, dubbed Jesse The Reader, which has more than 315,000 subscribers.

George previously told SBJ he’s now working full-time as a YouTuber, a job that’s relatively new and born of the internet.

Technology, a love of books and passion gave George the chance to connect with Obama. Springfield’s creativity is increasingly becoming more well known, and for good reason, considering George and the other talented individuals living and working in our city.