More Obama Rally

When we were walking into the rally, there was a man standing against a wall with a yellow posterboard sign draped around his neck by thin white string which said something to the effect of, "What does God think of killing six million innocent babies?" You could tell the guy was kinda smug, and my mom could sense it too and she said to him, "What does God think of killing thousands of innocent civilians in Iraq?" The guy was a little shocked for a second, and seemed to not know what to say, and then somewhat smugly replied, "He doesn't approve of it."

My mom used to be a single-issue, pro-life voter. I don't know how or why she changed.

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My mom befriended two people at the rally. The first was a white man about her age in the line in front of us, wearing a wooly hat with a short brim and I think stuff to cover the ears and a trashbag on his torso to protect from the rain. I don't know what he talked about to my mom, but I know that at some point they talked about negative advertising, and someone I entered the conversation and he told me that I might like the movie The Boogiemen. Or maybe it was The Boogieman. In either case, it was about how Lee Attwater invented negative ads for campaigns in the Dukakis campaign and completely destroyed his campaign in a week. We talked about how terrible that was, and we talked about how the Republicans have actually gone as far as to slander Obama as a Muslim Terrorist.

The other guy was a black man also about her age, maybe a little bit older, that ended up next to us during the rally. He worked in a bottle factory in Allentown, and drove all the way down to see this rally. He talked to my mom about how excited he was to be there because everyone at work was Republican, and he could never share his excitement there. He seemed like a really nice guy, and I felt bad for him because of this next story.

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One of the 'rules' listed in the e-mail was not to bring umbrellas. Of course, people didn't listen, I brought an umbrella, but I put it down as soon as I got into the rally because I didn't want to block peoples' views and it was hardly raining anyway. However, there were a LOT of people that left their umbrellas up. There was an open space in front of Obama for a number of yards, then an orange mesh fence, then a gate, and we were about fourth row back from the gate. You could hardly see him from there anyway, and to make it worse, these jerks in the front had umbrellas, blocking the view for everyone.

People in the crowd got really really angry. We started chanting to put the umbrellas away, but there were still some up by the time Obama started talking, and no one behind the front row could see him except to cleverly position themselves in a line through the umbrellas. At one point I got really frustrated, so I tore my way through the crowd to a person in the front row with an obnoxiously large blue umbrella, tapped them on the shoulder and said, "Hey, could you please put your umbrella down so everyone back there can see?" Seeming not to know - which was ridiculous after our chanting - she agreed to put it down, and everyone cheered.

A second later, a young black girl put an umbrella up.

We could. not. believe it. That was not the change we needed. The change we needed was umbrellas down right now.

People yelled insults to her and told her to put the umbrella down, but she didn't listen. People kept screaming and getting frustrated and Obama was talking, but the sound system was low and the screams were loud and angry so you could rarely hear a word. I was getting frustrated again so I went up to the girl and asked her to put the umbrella down, and she said no, and I said, "Please? There's like 500 people back there that can't see because of your umbrella," and she said, "Do you see my hair?"

Her hair was in very small curls, and I suppose it would come undone if it was wet, but bits of it had already come out. It clearly wasn't a perm. I don't know anything about perms but I know that this situation wouldn't arise if it were. So she could easily do it again. Everyone got really mad at her, and she left her umbrella up, leaving hundreds of people unable to see. Another person had the gall to put up a lady-bug designed umbrella somewhere to my left, and people jeered at them too.

The worst of it all is that it was hardly raining. After a long while - by the very end of the speech - the black girl in front of us put the umbrella down, and we could all see, and we were elated. Unfortunately, it was the very end of the speech, so we just heard his normal closing that you heard tonight on the Obama infomercial.

That stupid girl. I'm so mad at her. The rule said no umbrellas. I drove 400 miles to see this. Do I see you hair? Yeah, I do, I don't care, I drove 400 miles and who knows how far all these other people came. At least one from Allentown. Others missing school. Selfish jerk.

People say that whatever you right on the internet can wind up on the front page of a newspaper, and I sort of hope this does, just so that she sees it. She'd probably be a jerk about it and say it was our fault for not being tall or something, but whatever. She's a punkass.

But the goal was just to go to a rally. And I did that. So whatever.

Peace out.

The Obama Rally

I was absolutely dedicated to seeing Barack Obama speak before he won this election. I wasn't going to tell my mom at first, because I knew that it would quite likely end in me driving a ridiculous number of hours to wherever he was on election night, or the night before, whichever I would find out was first. But sometime when I was home I sort of let it slip, and she didn't seem to have a problem with it, and neither did my dad.

Now, of course, Obama and his campaign had claimed that they would suspend all visits to Pennsylvania because they were so sure they were going to win it about a month ago, but then McCain realized it was his only path to something even close to a possible victory and began pouring all of his race-baiting and fear-mongering into Pennsyltucky. This kind of sucked, because it's terrible politics, but it increased the chances of Obama being back in Pennsylvania, which was (in a small way) good for me. As it turned out, he announced that he would be holding a rally on the quad at Widener University on Tuesday, October 28th, 2008, and my mom told me about it, and I decided this was my chance.

I also found out he was going to be in a huge stadium the Monday just before in Pittsburgh, which is closer by, but I wasn't sure how to get there and my sister and Sam couldn't go because grades were due, so I figured going home would be preferable. I was a little worried, though, that Widener wouldn't fit enough people. If I was going to an Obama rally, I wanted it to be a big one to really experience his campaign. But anyway.

So I made plans, talked with the parents, etc. I gave my fish, Gauss, to Cat, who often cares for him whenever I go away for whatever reason. She seems to like him a lot. I asked my mom if I could bring home some laundry since I hadn't done any in forever, and she said that would be fine. I didn't pack the night before because I spent all my time doing my linear algebra homework and my Math 451 assignment, and I knew it wouldn't be worth going to Econ the next day, so I'd use that time to pack. I finished early, so I went to talk to Gina, who was hanging out in the Hub, and I think she was there with Dani, and I got a Krispy Kreme doughnut before I found them.

After my next two classes, it was time to go, so I biked back to my dorm and picked up my stuff and gave my fish to Cat and changed his water with Gina, since I want his tank to stay as super clean as when I supercleaned it recently. Gina gets worried when I go away so I hugged her and stuff and then said goodbye and left. I was thinking about homework as I drove away and realized I left my backpack in my dorm room, so I had to stop back to get it.

I'm going into too much detail. I also went to Friendly's with Abby, Chloe, Lexi, and Sarah. Our waitress was really slow but very sweet. There was a huge bug that scared the crap out of us and followed us from one table to the next. Abby was wearing eyeliner and looked very pretty, and Chloe was wearing Dave's alpaca. Afterward I drove to Kristin's house and gave her a big hug since I haven't seen her in forever, and we talked near her fire outside. I visited Michelle and her boyfriend Cory was there, her dog attacked me. I did homework for the rest of the night and felt very frustrated and had to watch The Daily Show while working. My mom baked me cookies and made me my favorite incarnation of chicken for dinner and I appreciated it a lot. The Phillies were playing the fifth game in the Series, but it got rain delayed in the sixth inning.

The next day when we woke up it was very cold, very rainy, very gray, and very windy. We didn't know if it would be cancelled, but he has never cancelled an event. Instead of going super early at about 7:30 [doors open at 8], we decided to show up around 9, assuming no one would want to go in this weather. I frantically organized the change in plans with Chloe and Abby, and found out later that Wasiq would not be coming. We all bundled up - I more than I ever have before - and went to the rally. We talked in the car about politics, and I caught up with Chloe and Abby on what was going on around school, with band, with the football team, with teachers, and other things. Apparently Mrs. Rock was never told by Julie that we had visited her, but that's okay.

There was one fun story about the rally that I will save for a separate post. Daily Show time for now.

Peace out.