Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Senator Clinton's night

Walking into the arena, both Diana and I were interviewed by a reporter from NPR in Boston about who we would like to see Senator Obama name to his cabinet for foreign policy issues. This was a much more substantial than usual question, but we both offered some thoughts.
As we got into the arena, Diana led us over to the NPR booth because she saw Ken Rudin, NPR's political editor, and is a big fan of his work. Ken and his colleague were eager to trade buttons. Ken specifically wanted an official delegate button (the ones that the state gave us to identify ourselves as NY delegates and to gain access to New York events.) We explained that we needed to keep those, but I offered them a Syracuse for Obama button, which while clearly not the plum that an official delegate button would be, was pretty unique. They accepted it and gave me an NPR button, which I pinned to my credentials. We saw them again later in the night and Ken smiled and made another plea for a delegate button, but to no avail. I think he smelled weakness on Diana, and thought she still might be persuaded, but no luck.

You could tell that this was the night that Senator Clinton was scheduled to give her big speech, because the international media was all over the New York delegation. Everyone wanted to sit with us, even the guy who played Toby on the West Wing (Richard Schiff). He walked by, chatted us up and asked if there was a seat open for him, to which the people behind me said they would make room for him. He climbed over and stayed with us for the rest of the night.

Scan of NY delegation, plus Richard Schiff:



Diana, Cory, Mark Poloncarz and I each sat in the front row of the New York delegation area tonight, which was a prime spot for people watching, and speech watching. While we were there, Dennis Kucinich came by, and Missouri Senator, Claire McCaskil. a lso, a famous actor whom none of us could successfully identify (including the Entertainment Tonight guy who interviewed him)... Corey remembered that he had been in "And the Band Played on" on HBO, and complimented him on his performance, which un-named famous guy seemed to appreciate. [Late update - mystery famous guy was Matthew Modine.] Angela Basset walked by us, and Mark Sheilds from the PBS News Hour stopped to talk for a minute.

Before Senator Clinton's speech we had speeches from Governor Mark Warner of Virginia and Governor Schweitzer of Montana. While these speeched were going on, Art Harris, from Entertainment tonight asked if he could sneak in with us, interview us and watch the speech with us. We agreed and he asked Diana, Corey and I what we expected from the speech, shot some reaction shots while she was speaking, and then interviewed us again when it was over. He also did periodic stand up shots where he referred to himself as being "embedded" with the New York delegation. He did not know for sure, what if any of it would be aired, but said it should run tomorrow night. At one point while he was doing one of the stand-up shots, I had moved so that I was sitting facing the delegation on the railing in front of us. Someone knocked into me, and as he did, Cory called out to Spike Lee, who greeted him, and did not in any manner apologize for pushing me off my ledge :)

As we got nearer to Senator Clinton's speech, I was interviewed by a woman from an African news network. She asked if anyone there spoke French, and I said "un petit peu." She asked me a few questions in English, but wanted at least one response in French and I had to beg out, because my French is no longer good enough to say anything of much intelligence, so I apologized and said "trop difficile." She asked me in English if I understood what an important moment in history this is. I said I did, and I put my hand over my heart and whispered, "I think we can do this." To which she smiled at me and said "thank you America."

For all this circus-like atmosphere, everyone really did listen intently to Senator Clinton's speech, which was very warmly received in the hall. It is one of the strange things of being in the center of what is going on, that you simultaneously have a very acute sense of what is going on around you, but no sense at all of what other people think is going on. None of us have seen any news or commentary in days. So, I have no idea how the speech was received, but it seemed like a home run within the arena.

After the speech was over I did a very brief interview with a reporter from BBC1. He was looking for reactions to the speech. I said I thought it was a very good speech, and that I thought it was particularly important that Senator Clinton had stressed that it is not about the personalities, but rather about the issues and people we care about. That if we believe in getting healthcare for all Americans, or if we believe in changing the course in Iraq, then we just cannot afford to have good people stay on the sidelines.

2 comments:

Sarah Cowen said...

GREAT post!!! Look at you hob-knobbing and rubbing elbows. Next time Spike pushes you, just push back. Here is Matthew Modine: http://www.imdb.com/media/rm568824832/nm0000546

Sarah Cowen said...

Forgot to mention that I HEART the Political Junkie! I have been listening intently to NPR this week. It seems that they have a lot of sound bytes on angry Clinton supporters though...hopefully we're healed!