American in Spain

I am Barack Obama's Press Secretary

September 1, 2008

I had a pretty bizarre dream the other night. I was working for the Obama campaign and they needed a new spokesperson. In a rather random pointing motion, Barack chose me out of a crowd of people. "But, I have no idea how to be a press secretary," I protested. "No problem," I was told, "You've seen Scott McClellan, Tony Snow, and Dana Perino, right? All you have to do is come up with unique ways to refuse to answer questions." Still confused, I said, "But shouldn't I know more about the campaign?" "No," the reply came, "your job isn't to answer questions; it's to refuse to answer questions!" Oh, okay...

Barack came over and said, "Son, you're going to need a tie. Here, take one of mine," he said, opening a door to his dressing room. "Pick any one you like and use that one. We've got a press conference in ten minutes." So there I was, in Senator Obama's closet, digging though a pile of ties. They're all blue and red, in case you hadn't noticed. But what was weird was that every single one I picked up was absolutely drenched in sweat! Presidential excretions. Yuck! I don't recall actually being in a press conference, but I kind of recall being seated at a table with bright lights and cameras. The other part of the dream I remember was becoming privy to some secret Obama campaign strategy. The campaign masterminds were explaining that the main problem Obama had with the election was, no surprise, getting the racist white votes. They were planning to orchestrate huge nationwide surge black-on-white violence: muggings, beatings, looting, and other non-lethal stuff. Then, when the national media worked itself into a frenzy about the rise of black crime, Barack Obama would step in and politely ask for the violence to stop. The violence would stop (since the criminals were being paid by the Obama campaign) and all the white voters would be astounded by Obama's influence over black people and would vote for Obama. I, of course, piped up and said that this sounded like a terrible idea, but I was told to leave the room.

The tie-choosing vignette was clearly the result of a recent tie-choosing meeting I had with my wife in preparation for a wedding this coming Saturday. And apparently I've been watching too much political news coverage. What doesn't make any sense to me is the horrible violence-based campaign scheming part. It sounds like the kind of divisive popularity plan that a super-villain would use.

Weird.