cryptomnesia

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Location: Brooklyn, New York, United States

Sunday, March 02, 2008

Oh, Me, Oh My Oh


My friend Sarah Kramer just sent me this picture of Obama from the night she and I worked at the benefit in New York last summer...this is his face right after shaking her hand. I feel like it embodies something of his charisma/cockiness/authenticity. I still didn't know who I was going to vote for that night, and talked to lots of people all evening about the choice. For some reason, the conversation that stayed with me the most wasn't about his politics. I sat at a table next to a woman who is close friends with Barack's sister. She was telling me how thoughtful he is, how he always remembers details about peoples' lives so he can refer to them...(like any politician). But she told me about seeing him at a wedding, and how he brought up the movie "Maria, Full of Grace." (She's a filmmaker, and her husband is Colombian.) He had seen the film and really liked it, wanted to know what she thought. Something about that really struck me...that a presidential candidate would actually have seen this independent film about international drug trafficking and teen pregnancy...and liked it enough to want to talk about it. I think I dated somebody who dated somebody who dated somebody who made that movie. I guess it was the moment for me, when he started to seem like "my people." I told my Dad (who has sometimes voted Republican but is now volunteering for the Obama campaign) this story and he compared it to some comment Kennedy made about Norman Mailer...