{"id":128,"date":"2007-12-10T07:37:09","date_gmt":"2007-12-10T07:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html"},"modified":"2007-12-10T07:37:09","modified_gmt":"2007-12-10T07:37:09","slug":"how-to-talk-to-the-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html","title":{"rendered":"How to Talk to the President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice.<br \/>\nHow do you get to the Oval Office?  <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/print?id=3973925\">Wikipedia<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When V\u00edfill Atlason, a 16-year-old high school student from Iceland, decided to call the White House, he could not imagine the kind of publicity it would bring.<br \/>\nIntroducing himself as \u00d3lafur Ragnar Gr\u00edmsson, the actual president of Iceland, Atlason found President George W. Bush&#8217;s allegedly secret telephone number and phoned, requesting a private meeting with him.<br \/>\n&#8220;I just wanted to talk to him, have a chat, invite him to Iceland and see what he&#8217;d say,&#8221; V\u00edfill told ABC News.<br \/>\nA White House official, who asked not to be identified, denied the young man had accessed a private number but instead dialled 202-456-1414, the main switchboard for the West Wing.<br \/>\nV\u00edfill&#8217;s mother, Harpa Hreinsdottir, a teacher at the local high school, said her son did, in fact, get through to a private phone.<br \/>\n&#8220;This was not a switchboard number of any kind,&#8221; she told ABC News, &#8220;it was a secret number at the highest security level.&#8221;<br \/>\nV\u00edfill claims he was passed on to several people, each of them quizzing him on President Gr\u00edmsson&#8217;s date of birth, where he grew up, who his parents were and the date he entered office.<br \/>\n&#8220;It was like passing through checkpoints,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But I had Wikipedia and a few other sites open, so it was not so difficult really.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. How do you get to the Oval Office? Wikipedia. When V\u00edfill Atlason, a 16-year-old high school student from Iceland, decided to call the White House, he could not imagine the kind of publicity it would bring. Introducing himself as \u00d3lafur Ragnar Gr\u00edmsson, the actual president of Iceland,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":352,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>How to Talk to the President - Feiler Faster<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to Talk to the President - Feiler Faster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. How do you get to the Oval Office? Wikipedia. When V\u00edfill Atlason, a 16-year-old high school student from Iceland, decided to call the White House, he could not imagine the kind of publicity it would bring. Introducing himself as \u00d3lafur Ragnar Gr\u00edmsson, the actual president of Iceland,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Feiler Faster\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-12-10T07:37:09+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"bfeiler\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How to Talk to the President - Feiler Faster","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"How to Talk to the President - Feiler Faster","og_description":"How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. How do you get to the Oval Office? Wikipedia. When V\u00edfill Atlason, a 16-year-old high school student from Iceland, decided to call the White House, he could not imagine the kind of publicity it would bring. Introducing himself as \u00d3lafur Ragnar Gr\u00edmsson, the actual president of Iceland,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html","og_site_name":"Feiler Faster","article_published_time":"2007-12-10T07:37:09+00:00","author":"bfeiler","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html","name":"How to Talk to the President - Feiler Faster","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-12-10T07:37:09+00:00","dateModified":"2007-12-10T07:37:09+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/cd560df5c2f027ddc9a594e3313de1d8"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/2007\/12\/how-to-talk-to-the-president.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"How to Talk to the President"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/","name":"Feiler Faster","description":"The Blog of Bestselling Author and Commentator Bruce Feiler","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/cd560df5c2f027ddc9a594e3313de1d8","name":"bfeiler","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ce3\/ce3529dc7e8bc71c31414750eb2dfd45x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/ce3\/ce3529dc7e8bc71c31414750eb2dfd45x96.jpg","caption":"bfeiler"},"description":"Bruce Feiler is one of America\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s most popular voices on faith, family, and finding meaning in everyday life. 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For more information, please visit brucefeiler.com or councilofdads.com.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/author\/bfeiler"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/352"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/feilerfaster\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}