Feb 04 2008
The Curse Of Kid Rock Is Overcome….As Barry Strides Into Denver and Gets His Groove On
In 1999, when I was sixteen years old, I waited in line for forty-five minutes to see Kid Rock play at the UNO Lakefront Area in New Orleans, LA. I had been listening to his album Devil Without a Cause on a daily basis, and felt a particular attachment to the track, “Bullgod,” which was his first single to gain significant radio play. Once my friends and I finally proceeded into the arena, we took seats on the far right next to the two towering speakers. As fate had it, we plopped down adjacent to a group of raucous twenty-one-year-old girls.
“Ask them to buy us daiquiris,” one of my buddies urged.
“What kind should we get?” I responded.
“Get 120 Octane, it’s what my brother always drinks, he says it’s the strongest.”
It was, and by the time Kid Rock came striding out in a leopard skin frock and a top hat, I was drunk.
I don’t remember much of that show, outside of the four gold cages that were suspended from the ceiling and filled with scantily clad dancers. In fact, I’m not even sure if they played “Bullgod,” although I assume they must have. However, I do know that when I woke up the next day—besides being hung-over for geometry—I couldn’t hear anything except for an intolerable ringing in my eardrums.
My deafness didn’t subside for an entire week, during which numerous doctors told me that I might suffer from hearing impairment for life. Ever since that miserable moment, I have strictly adhered to the belief that almost nothing in life is worth waiting in line for.
However, On Tuesday, January 30th, I found myself bobbing up and down for warmth at eight-thirty in the morning along with over 15,000 others, a single speck, in a line that shouted, smiled, and snaked its way across five blocks of the Denver University campus in the hopes of getting a glimpse of presidential candidate Barack Obama. Mr. Obama was just a week off of one of the most impressive conquests of his campaign, a brutal trouncing of Senator Hillary Clinton in South Carolina, in which he defeated the former First Lady by a vote margin of more than two to one. With exactly one week left until the Super Tuesday primaries, he was picking up steam; nevertheless, he was still trailing Mrs. Clinton by eleven points in national presidential polls.
However in Denver on Tuesday, there didn’t seem to be a dour looking face in all the lot, despite the fact that it was 22 degrees and we hadn’t progressed an inch in over an hour. The soccer Mom’s in front of me were well bundled and pre-occupied with chat about the PTA, and behind me sauntered a group of college students ranting about midterms and bemoaning the fact that they hadn’t brought a “J for the line.”
After waiting for an hour and half, I got a call from a friend of mine who was an Obama precinct captain, and through her influence I was allowed to bypass the horde and make it inside. I later learned that if it weren’t for her favor, I would have been consigned to a seat in the lacrosse bleachers, where Mr. Obama spoke briefly to the overflow crowd.
Instead, I waltzed inside, where the energy level was high.
Obama had just recently received the endorsement of Senator Ted Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy, and it was Caroline who introduced him to a monsoon of applause. The support of the daughter and the brother of America’s most iconic president was a boost for the Obama campaign, accentuating Obama’s appeal as an agent of change.
During his speech, Obama hit upon on the usual spectrum of Democratic issues, from providing universal healthcare to withdrawing from Iraq. But while doing so, he chose not to make many ideological distinctions between himself and Mrs. Clinton.
Instead, Senator Obama drew contrast between his character and that of the former First Lady.
Obama furthered paralleled himself to John. F. Kennedy by relaying an exchange that occurred between Kennedy and Harry Truman, when Truman advised Kennedy to put off running for the presidency.
“Harry Truman, urged patience, “ Obama said. “And John Kennedy replied: ‘The world is changing. The old ways will not do. It is time for a new generation of leadership.’”
In a nutshell, this has become Obama’s message and campaign strategy deftly tied into one. He knows he is an inspirational figure with a charismatic, public persona that Mrs. Clinton cannot match, so he flaunts his similarities to political icons of the past whenever possible.
In contrast, Mrs. Clinton’s strategy of questioning Mr. Obama’s experience seems to have lost its sway, especially since Mr. Obama has responded by embracing his lack of Washington credentials and proclaiming them as a virtue.
“Washington wants to boil me, wants to stew the hope out of me,” he often jokes, portraying himself as a crusader aimed at altering a government that has continually failed the American people, a government of greed and “cronyism” to which Mrs. Clinton belongs
Obama also suggests that a Clinton presidency will be a regression to the politics of the past.
“I know it is tempting—after another presidency by a man named George Bush—to simply turn back the clock, and to build a bridge back to the 20th century,” he said in Denver.
It is a classic battle of old guard versus new guard politics, and Obama appears to have finally grown comfortable with his role as populist crusader—and it seems the nation may be growing more comfortable with the idea of him becoming president as well.
Although he still trails Clinton nationally, Obama has made huge strides in many of the key primary states in the last week. According to a Zogby poll released on Sunday, February 3rd, he has opened up a twenty-point lead in Georgia, is neck and neck with Hillary in New Jersey and Missouri, and picked up fifteen percentage points in the last two weeks to take the lead from Mrs. Clinton in California, the biggest prize of all the Super Tuesday states.
It appears that the Clinton dam is on the verge of breaking, but with only one day remaining before the dawn of Super Tuesday, does the Illinois senator have enough time to crash through?
If Mr. Obama takes enough delegates to keep things close after this Tuesday, he may send the Clinton machine spinning into disarray. In fact, the longer the nomination stays unsettled, the more saturated and intrigued America will become with the improbable storyline of a half-black, half-white, junior Senator with a weird name toppling the matron of one of America’s most dominant political sects.
At Denver University on Tuesday, it took Barack Obama fifteen minutes to make it to the podium—the crowd screaming and chanting as he signed autographs and slapped hands. But once he began to orate, there were moments in between the chanting and the applause when all of those in attendance seemed to be gripped in jut-jawed astonishment. It was as if they felt that they were watching something, or someone, who might be on the verge of turning a corner on the American political system, and radically altering the “brand” of politics we can expect for years go come.
Throughout his candidacy, Mr. Obama has evoked comparisons with Dr. Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and JFK. Personally, after watching him in the flesh, he reminds me of someone else.