Sweet Potato Pie

The New York Review of Books.

[ Everything else they would never see. It existed only for the several thousand cheering people in Vernon Park on that bright morning in Germantown. They would never see, for instance, Obama's riff on sweet potato pie. It came as he told a story about his campaigning "the other day in a little town in Ohio, with the governor there," about how he and the governor suddenly felt hungry and "decided we'd stop right there and get some pie." Now here began a little gem of a story, which had at its center the diner employees who wanted to take a picture with Obama, not least because, as they told him, their boss was a die-hard Republican and "they wanted to tweak him a little with that picture." All this was heading toward a carefully choreographed finale, where the owner appeared personally with the pie for candidate and governor and Obama looked at the pie and looked at the pie-carrying die-hard Republican owner and "then I said to him"—perfectly elongated pause—"How's business?"

This brought on great gales of laughter from the crowd. For the joke turned on a point already precisely made: How can even the most die-hard of die-hard Republicans, if he is thinking of his self-interest, how can he vote Republican this year? "If you beat your head against the wall," Obama demanded of that faraway Republican with his pie, to a blizzard of "oh yeahs!" and "you got that right!" from the crowd, "and it hurts and hurts, how can you keep doing it?" But it was those two words, "How's business?"—that casual greeting thrown at the Republican diner owner that showed that there simply could be no other choice this year—that showed the case proved, wrapped up, unassailable.

And yet what struck me in this little model of political art was a tiny riff the candidate effortlessly worked into it from his banter with the crowd. When Obama launched into his story with "Because I love pie," a woman out in that sea of cheering, laughing people shouted back, " I'll make you pie, baby!" and to the general hooting laughter the candidate returned, "Oh yeah, you gonna make me pie?" Then, after a beat, amid even more raucous laughter, and several other female voices shouting out invitations, "You gonna make me sweet potato pie? " More shouts and laughter. " All you gonna make me pie?"

"Well you know I love sweet potato pie. And I think what we're going to have to do here"—and the laughter and the shouting rose and as it did his voice rose above it—"what we're going to have to do here is have a sweet potato pie contest.... That's right. And in this contest, I'm gonna be the judge." The laughter rose and you could hear not only the women but the deep laughter of the men taking delight in the double entendre that was not only about the women and their laughing, teasing offers and about their pie that that lanky confident smiling young man knew how to eat and enjoy and judge, but even more now, amazingly, as people came one by one to recognize, about something else. To those people gathered in Vernon Park that bright sun-drenched morning, it was an even more titillating and more pleasurable double entendre, for it was most clearly about something they'd never had but hoped and dreamed of having and now had begun to believe they were within the shortest of short distances of finally tasting. "Because you all know," their candidate told them, "that I know sweet potato pie." ]

I heard that *&^% Arnold, "the Austrian One," standing next to McCain, going on about Obama's skinny little legs and how he needed to get some muscle on him like a real man, and how his ideas needed some muscle like real ideas.

Well who is short and stumpy and you know jealous as heck about Obama's height? And who moves like a dancer, or ... a basketball player? And um, who really isn't a U.S. citizen and thus cannot ever be POTUS? They are so transparent.

No Press Questions Or Meetings To Be Allowed

With sp, according to the rnc.

Cowards!

Ooooh, big girl with big gun is afraid of the press.

That's red meat for the press, and you know what happens when the press smells blood.

Sp's so convenient with that great big family -- she's a got a family member to appeal to every special interest: special needs child, son AND nephew going to Iraq (they won't be going into combat if their mom and aunt makes it to D.C. though), adolescent daughter who 'got into trouble,' a sister who started a new biz (which evidently sp had a 25% share in and they went bust or something -- maybe it was a different biz, a car wash that wasn't the gas station sp stated?), husband in the erl biz and total sportsman, they all have guns and shoot them. They just don't have anybody that fits into the LBGT slot. Dang. But the young 'uns have time yet ....

Is that a fair remark? Considering how they've put that family front and center as THE REASON SP IS QUALIFIED FOR THE OVAL OFFICE, why yes, it is fair to itemize how appealing they are to the voters.

Will the American voters not understand what it means that a person who is running a VPOTUS, someone a heartbeat from the presidency of this nation, cannot be asked any questions while campaigning to be that person? Will they not understand that not only is this not democracy this isn't even an election? Will they not realize that this is the divine right of kings, and even stalinism and naziism? Will this not turn around and bite the 'cain campaign in the ass?

Will sp not become the most hated person in the nation, making the hatred of Hillary Clinton look small in comparison?