Twirling Towards Freedom

We almost never get the kind of national election campaigning in Texas that we've gotten over the last couple weeks, but with the Democratic candidates running neck and neck, you can't turn around in Houston without running into one of them. I was in a convenience store just yesterday buying a Coke and a box of hollow-point 45 bullets and when my total came to $18.01, I searched my pocket in vain for a penny. That's when Barack Obama, who was in line behind me, held out a shiny new Lincoln. Or at least i think it was shiny; I could just have been dazzled by his winning smile. Anyway, before I could take his penny, Hillary Clinton pushed to the front of the line and made me take her penny instead. She said it was just like his, but unlike Barack's penny, which I was free to decline, I had to take Hillary's. She had lots of Secret Service guys with her, so I didn't argue. Needless to say, it's a good time to be in Texas if you're interested in the music presidential candidates use to juice their stump speeches.


I went to See Michelle Obama speak at the University of Houston Monday. I hadn't been to that particular venue for several years so I was surprised at how they have spruced things up. For example, they added a couple giant video screens on either side of the stage (which were lit up with slogans) and, more importantly, sound dampening, which prevented the awful slapback echo the room used to have*. The first song I heard as I approached the venue was U2's "Pride (In the Name of Love)," which is an obvious choice, to be sure. Bono and MLK? All you need are a couple slices of bread (whole grain, please, these are Democrats) and you have an instant hope sandwich. This was followed by some nondescript, but positive 70s soul. Sure, makes sense. And then Tom Petty's "American Girl." Hmm. I'm not sure what that's supposed to imply. Maybe nothing. "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding." Yeah, okay. Then a string of other songs that I don't remember. And just before the warm-up entertainment, "American Girl" again. That can't be an accident. They must be trying to get across some message there.

The actual event itself went very smoothly:

• Hope
• Change
• Working class background
• "They" set the bar high and said we couldn't do this and when we did, "they" move the bar.
• Yes we can.
  

There was an awful lot of talk about this bar**, so one imagines that the first thing Obama would do as president would be to buy some nails so he can keep that infernal thing in place. After all the bar talk, the speech was over and they played the odd choice of Ryan Adams' "Firecracker" as we shuffled out past the anchor people doing on-the-scene reporting.

Wednesday I heard on the radio that Bill Clinton was going to have several events in Houston, so I dug around on the Hillary Clinton website looking for locations. You would think they would make it easy and display things like that prominently. Nope.  But this was just the the first of many signs of disorganization in the Clinton campaign. I finally found that Bill was going to be at a park a couple miles from where I live. Again, you would think that they would make it easy for me and have better notice about an event that was happening near where I live. Again, no. By the time I got to the park, Bill was long gone, but I talked to a cop who said I could catch him at one of the other events. So I set out for his next stop at a community college some ten miles from where I live. When I got there, though, Senator Palatine--er--Bill Clinton was already on his way to his next stop. I had no desire to stalk him all the way out to west Houston, no matter how much I love Jodie Foster.

The finale of my week with the presidential candidates was the Hillary Clinton rally. The helpful Clinton website said that the event started at 7:00 at a location I'd never been, but that I remembered from Rushmore. That's almost like having been there.


I got there a little early, thinking it was going to be pretty crowded.  As my reward for planning, I got to wait in line for half an hour for them to open the doors to let us in. I also got to hear all about the boss of the women behind me in line. Volunteers walked up and down the line telling us that we couldn't bring signs in. Grizzled men with mustaches tried to sell us buttons for $5. Each. FairTax people handed out t-shirts. LaRouchies handed out flyers***.

Once inside, I had to empty my pockets and go through a metal detector. Finally I made my way to the bleachers and sat down next to a middle aged woman with teased hair who immediately scooted away from me. Despite its nifty 50s modern exterior, the interior of the Delmar Gymnasium is, well, a gymnasium.


If you've even been inside a gymnasium--and I know you have--you know that their acoustic properties are amazing. It's only possible to hear sounds that are close to you clearly; distant sounds become a muddled wash of noise. And this is what the Delmar Gymnasium is like, too. As I sat down, there was a seven piece mariachi band playing, but I couldn't really tell.  It looked like they were playing, but all I actually heard were the horns and the occasional note or two from other instruments cutting through the soundwash.

This went on for half an hour or so until the "jazz band" of 13 year old inner city kids started playing. I heard cymbals every once in a while, so I'm pretty sure they were playing. Then a 13 year old girl got on the stage to sing. She had a microphone, but there were no monitors and presumably the band was loud where she was standing, so she had to belt out "Respect." The speakers were right in front of me, so I heard her singing pretty well. Too well. You know the really bad audition portion of American Idol? Right. Except much louder. This girl was followed by a slightly older Latina in an orange prom dress who sang a song about being in the arms of another man. Her pitch was--and I still find this hard to believe--even worse than the first girl's. After they wrapped up, there was a bit of silence and the mariachis came back out to play. Then the band again, reprising "Respect." Clearly they were stalling. Clinton was meeting with energy barons before this, after all. Then the mariachis again. Around this time, a guy who looked like Alex P. Keaton began distributing signs which were handmade, presumably by Clinton apparatchiks, with bland slogans like "Texas Has Found Her Star" and "Texas is Hillary Country."**** Finally at 9:30, fully three hours after I got there, the warm-up. A county commissioner. Only when she was done did they start playing pre-recorded music. They started with a nondescript number that I didn't recognize, which could have been any song produced in Nashville this year. Then a U2 song I also didn't recognize. "Suddenly I See" by KT Tunstall. Springsteen's "The Rising" was cut off so that they could play Jesus Jones' "Right Here, Right Now."

And...Congressman Gene Green, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson-Lee, State Senator Mario Gallegos, and Hillary Clinton. Sigh. It's about time. Green didn't say much. Gallegos made sure he said things in Spanish. Jackson-Lee got in as much time as she could, trying to get the crowd excited. She said things like, "Does anybody not believe we can win?" And everybody cheered. So I guess everybody thinks they can't win. Finally Clinton:

• Hope
• Change
• Working class background

Clinton, it seemed, had read the Wikipedia entry on Houston just before getting up to speak. "You have a port that we need to protect," she said. Further, she said that one of the things that distinguishes her from her opponent is that she wants to make sure NASA has the funding they need. She doesn't want our astronauts going up on rockets made in China or Russia; she wants them going up on rockets made right here in Houston. Never you mind that we don't make the rockets in Houston.***** 

At points, the crowd broke into chants of "sí se puede," a popular theme in this election, apparently, and Hillary made sure to point out that she was honored to have been endorsed by César Chávez's family. Then more Jesus Jones and she was gone, leaving me to again shuffle past the media (no recognizable anchor people this time), and wander through the parking lot, looking for my car, while everybody else was pushing their keychain's panic button to find their cars.

I wasn't able to go to the Obama rally last week, which took place at a much bigger venue than the Clinton rally.  Instead, I went to see the new Michel Gondry movie (disappointing). However, after reading about Maxim's proleptic review****** of the new Black Crowes album, I figure that I, too, have license to make up whatever I want.

The Barack Obama rally was the opposite of the other events I attended because instead of talking and loud music, everybody stood perfectly still. There were very few sounds, much less music, as Obama crept out to his podium and stood there as a motionless crowd of thousands stared back at him. He delivered a speech, which has been described as rousing in other cities, but here nobody was roused. Or at least they weren't on the outside. Inside, they were very much awake and strangely craving brains.

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*Both of these things would have been awesome to have many years ago when I was putting music shows there.
**There were people signing for the hard of hearing, looking like mimes pushing up an invisible bar.
***I really, really don't understand the LaRouche phenomenon. This guy could find a conspiracy in a room containing one person. Here is an actual quote from the flyer, talking about what he thinks will happen in this election:

Democratic Option: Following the London orchestration of Obama's downfall, Hillary is also eliminated in some way, and Bloomberg's machine grabs the Presidency and with the support of Schwarzeneggar, institutes the immediate reign of a neo-Schachtian, corporativist fascist program of Lazard Frères-created George Schultz "revolution in military affairs" crony Felix Rohatyn, in the U.S.A.

You can't make stuff like that up. Or at least I can't. And anyway.

****None of these astroturf signs were nearly as good as the ones that three women on the other side of the gymnaisum from me smuggled in. They each had a sign with a word on each side. One set read "You Go Girl" and the other set read "Wear That Pantsuit."

*****Here, for your perusal, is Obama's space plan [pdf].

******"Proleptic" is a new word for me this week and it's pure serendipity that I ran into it in the same week of such a good example of it. But the best part is how I ran across it--I was reading a William F. Buckley, Jr. obit that pointed to this Safire article, which talks about Buckley's accent. But later in the piece, Safire talks about prolepsis and how he first heard the word from Madame Chiang Kai-shek. This will be the one and only time you will ever see "Madame Chiang;" William F. Buckley, Jr; and "The Black Crowes" used in the same place.