Politics in the Snow
Fridays are usually a day of low productivity for me. My workplace usually closes up shop around noon, and I generally head down to Paoli to put in a few hours at my dad's shop. Today I'm positively dragging ass, mainly since I was in Milwaukee last night to catch the Drive-by Truckers at the Pabst. More to come on that later. But I do have a lot to post about. Over the last couple weeks I've been fairly busy. Here's one of the interesting things I've done lately:
Two weeks ago the political spotlight was on Wisconsin, as our primary elections came around. As a result, there were suddenly candidates criss-crossing the state. I ventured out one cold Tuesday night to see Barack Obama at the Kohl Center in Madison. I met up with M. Haak, who still apparently has my Tragically Hip CD. We hit up the west-side Tex Tubb's and made our way downtown. It was packed, and the Kohl Center was standing room only. We stood around waiting for about an hour and a half, with music playing on the PA and a few warm-up speeches from campaign staffers. After seeing the Will.I.Am video on the scoreboard screens, Governor Jim Doyle came out and introduced Obama. The place went nuts. Cameras flashes were ubiquitous, and I added my own contribution, resulting in these pictures. Obama gave a fairly typical (from what I've seen on the news) stump speech, coupled with a defacto victory speech for the Potomac Primaries (VA, MD & D.C.). His speech clocked in around thirty or forty minutes, but he is an unbelievably gifted speaker so the time seemed to really fly by. I had come with the intentions of passively listening to his positions with the pretense of being undecided, but toward the end I was enraptured and cheering along with the crowd. I was highly impressed. I try to keep knowledgable on current events and politics, so I like to think my BS detector is well-tuned. In that setting, however, I was swept along with the emotion and enthusiasm of the crowd. Regardless, I've come back down to Earth and can look back on the experience (somewhat) rationally: I was able to see a Presidential candidate speak in a live setting, and it's something that everyone should take an opportunity to do at least once.
Two weeks ago the political spotlight was on Wisconsin, as our primary elections came around. As a result, there were suddenly candidates criss-crossing the state. I ventured out one cold Tuesday night to see Barack Obama at the Kohl Center in Madison. I met up with M. Haak, who still apparently has my Tragically Hip CD. We hit up the west-side Tex Tubb's and made our way downtown. It was packed, and the Kohl Center was standing room only. We stood around waiting for about an hour and a half, with music playing on the PA and a few warm-up speeches from campaign staffers. After seeing the Will.I.Am video on the scoreboard screens, Governor Jim Doyle came out and introduced Obama. The place went nuts. Cameras flashes were ubiquitous, and I added my own contribution, resulting in these pictures. Obama gave a fairly typical (from what I've seen on the news) stump speech, coupled with a defacto victory speech for the Potomac Primaries (VA, MD & D.C.). His speech clocked in around thirty or forty minutes, but he is an unbelievably gifted speaker so the time seemed to really fly by. I had come with the intentions of passively listening to his positions with the pretense of being undecided, but toward the end I was enraptured and cheering along with the crowd. I was highly impressed. I try to keep knowledgable on current events and politics, so I like to think my BS detector is well-tuned. In that setting, however, I was swept along with the emotion and enthusiasm of the crowd. Regardless, I've come back down to Earth and can look back on the experience (somewhat) rationally: I was able to see a Presidential candidate speak in a live setting, and it's something that everyone should take an opportunity to do at least once.
posted by wallrock at 11:29 AM
2 Comments:
Pretty cool. I wish I could've gone, but I was-- you guessed it-- at work!
I bet that was an interesting experience. Our primaries are next week, but I doubt we will be having any candidates to visit.
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