Stuff it, PUMAs Redux
I was going to tack this info onto the end of the original (and overrun) “Stuff it, PUMAs” post from yesterday, but I figured I’d give the Krazy Kat Kacklers for Klinton a fresh litter box to poop in…
Once again, I present to you the adults of the Democratic party...
Carmella Lewis, second from right, of Denver, Colo., plugs her ears as Sen. Barack Obama speaks to supporters in Unity yesterday afternoon. Lewis, a delegate pledged to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, attended the rally with fellow Clinton supporter Freda Smith, left, of Salem, N.H., to shout support for Clinton.
From The Day...
That’s because Obama’s opponents, like Carol Stone-Oks, a school psychologist who came from Cambridge, Mass., and Carmella Lewis, a Clinton delegate holding a “Hillary” sign who’d come all the way from Denver to express her displeasure at this show of mutual appreciation, seemed to be as good as the campaigns themselves at working the tired, caged-in press. [...]
Almost as soon as crowds began to trickle through security into the grassy field, ready for the first joint appearance of Obama and Clinton since he clinched the Democratic presidential nomination, Stone-Oks appeared at the metal barricade that Obama campaign staffers use to keep reporters apart from those who attend the candidate’s rallies.
At first, she attracted little notice as she complained to reporters that a small group of anti-Obama demonstrators had been moved from the front entrance to the rally site, apparently at the direction of the Secret Service. Early arrivals were more concerned with the opening drudgery of a campaign stop: finding working power strips for laptops, asking if the wireless Internet was working, ducking under tables or shrouding themselves with suitcoats in order to see their computer screens in the blinding sun and grumbling about the conditions foisted upon them by the Obama campaign’s stage management. [...]
But eventually Stone-Oks acquired an audience, for herself and for an ally, Sharon Chang, largely because they seemed to realize that Chang was what the vast array of media was looking for: A quotable detractor of the nominee who would say she’d rather vote for Republican John McCain than anyone other than Clinton. (That threat meant less coming from Stone-Oks, who conceded that she was a Republican anyway.)
”You’re familiar with ‘puma?’ “ Chang asked the veteran reporter David Lightman of McClatchy newspapers, gesturing to the logo of the sneaker company on her shirt, but meaning something very different.
When Lightman raised his eyebrows, Chang spelled it out: “Party unity, my ass.” [...]
Meanwhile, Carmella Lewis was leaning over to tell reporters that Clinton’s backers could still stage an insurrection at the convention in August, and rolling her eyes and groaning as her candidate urged supporters to do the exact opposite. When Obama began speaking, she groaned more, then wadded up bits of paper and jammed them into her ears.
And yet, there was that unity thing.
When a compatriot of Lewis’ felt faint during Clinton’s address, those around her held out campaign signs: a Clinton-Obama canopy. A mustachioed man in a dress shirt leaned forward from behind the tangle of CNN’s cables and tripods to hand Lewis a cup of water, which she accepted immediately, not recognizing David Axelrod, Obama’s chief strategist.
And MoDo was delighted to report today about one of the few people present in the little town of Unity that day who was more despicable than her:
Carmella Lewis, with her Hillary T-shirt and Hillary placard, came all the way from Denver to make sure there would be plenty of ambiguity, duality and ferocity in Unity.
Just as Hillary was testing out the unfamiliar familiarity “Barack and me” Friday and talking about “his grace and his grit,” Carmella began loudly booing and waving her sign.
“We want Hillary!” screamed the 57-year-old retired ad saleswoman and Clinton delegate.
“It’s over, lady!” yelled some Obama supporters a few yards away.
Standing between the Sharks and the Jets, David Axelrod took pity on an older friend of Carmella’s who was suffering from aridity in the Unity humidity. The chief Obama strategist fetched a glass of water and brought it to the woman, who was wearing five Hillary buttons.
This amenity did not stop the disunity. Carmella and her friends continued to cry, “Nobama!” “We love you, Hillary!” and “We need Hillary!” as Barack Obama sat onstage on a stool behind his former rival, his finger studiously at his lips.
Carmella was not impressed with all the kissing, laughing and whispering that Hill and Bam were diligently doing for the cameras, so that the moment could produce, as Obama press aide Robert Gibbs put it on “Larry King Live,” “a great picture.”
When it was Obama’s turn to speak, Carmella announced loudly, “I wish I had ear plugs.” Then, as Obama tried to ingratiate himself with the Hillary partisans in the crowd by saying that because of the New York senator, his daughters “can take for granted that women can do anything that the boys can do and do it better and do it in heels,” Carmella put her fingers in her ears.
As Obama tried to curry favor with Hillary, looking over at her sensible, sturdy shoes and marveling, “I still don’t know how she does it in heels,” Carmella tore up a tissue and stuffed it in her ears.
When Obama pandered with a line about how he wouldn’t “perpetuate a system in which women are paid less for the same work as men,” she put her hands over her tissue-stuffed ears.
“Maybe she’d like what she heard if she listened,” sighed Axelrod.
When Obama talked about moving beyond “all the petty bickering,” as Hillary robo-nodded at his side and CNN’s Candy Crowley applied pre-broadcast lipstick above her, Carmella glared at people applauding.
(photo and The Day article via DU)
Posted by Kevin K. on 06/29/08 at 06:13 AM • Permalink
Categories: Images • News • Politics • Election '08 • St. McSame • Barack Obama • Hillary Clinton • Editorials • PUMAs • Skull Hampers •
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