{"id":2832,"date":"2011-01-29T14:05:49","date_gmt":"2011-01-29T14:05:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=2832"},"modified":"2011-01-29T14:05:49","modified_gmt":"2011-01-29T14:05:49","slug":"bam-and-sweet-potato-pie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2011\/01\/bam-and-sweet-potato-pie\/","title":{"rendered":"Bam and sweet potato pie"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a story from Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign which I meant to blog when I read it.\u00a0\u00a0 From an article by Mark Danner<\/a>:<\/p>\n

E<\/span>verything else they [election commentators and bloggers] 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\u2019s riff on sweet potato pie. It came as he told a story about his campaigning \u201cthe other day in a little town in Ohio, with the governor there,\u201d about how he and the governor suddenly felt hungry and \u201cdecided we\u2019d stop right there and get some pie.\u201d 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 \u201cthey wanted to tweak him a little with that picture.\u201d 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 \u201cthen I said to him\u201d\u2014perfectly elongated pause\u2014\u201cHow\u2019s business?\u201d
\nThis 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? \u201cIf you beat your head against the wall,\u201d Obama demanded of that faraway Republican with his pie, to a blizzard of \u201coh yeahs!\u201d and \u201cyou got that<\/em> right!\u201d from the crowd, \u201cand it hurts and hurts, how can you keep doing it?\u201d But it was those two words, \u201dHow\u2019s business?\u201d\u2014that casual greeting thrown at the Republican diner owner that showed that there simply could be<\/em> no other choice this year\u2014that showed the case proved, wrapped up, unassailable.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cBecause I love<\/em> pie,\u201d a woman out in that sea of cheering, laughing people shouted back, \u201cI\u2019ll make you pie, baby!\u201d and to the general hooting laughter the candidate returned, \u201cOh yeah, you gonna make<\/em> me pie?\u201d Then, after a beat, amid even more raucous laughter, and several other female voices shouting out invitations, \u201cYou gonna make me sweet potato pie<\/em>?\u201d More shouts and laughter. \u201cAll<\/em> you gonna make me pie?\u201d<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cWell you know I love sweet potato pie. And I think what we\u2019re going to have to do here\u201d\u2014and the laughter and the shouting rose and as it did his voice rose above it\u2014\u201cwhat we\u2019re going to have to do here is have a sweet potato pie contest<\/em>…. That\u2019s right. And in this contest, I\u2019m<\/em> gonna be the judge.\u201d 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\u2019d 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. \u201cBecause you all know,\u201d their candidate told them, \u201cthat I know<\/em> sweet potato pie.\u201d “<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Reference:<\/em>
\nMark Danner [2008]:\u00a0 Obama and Sweet Potato Pie<\/a>.\u00a0 New York Review of Books<\/em>, 23 October 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a story from Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign which I meant to blog when I read it.\u00a0\u00a0 From an article by Mark Danner: Everything else they [election commentators and bloggers] would never see. It existed only for the several thousand cheering people in Vernon Park on that bright morning in Germantown. They would never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,64,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-obama-speeches","category-politics","category-rhetoric","p1","y2011","m01","d29","h14"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}