Wednesday, July 30, 2008

The Hometowners: Obama and McCain

When you’re hot, you’re hot.
And when you’re not, you’re not.
– Jerry Reed

No one wants to repeat Al Gore’s non-election. He lost Tennessee, his home state.
So GOP nominee-to-be John McCain feels the need to campaign a bit more in Arizona, even though he represents it in the U.S. Senate.
Things slip. People who know you best may not view you as presidential timber. And the minority vote prefers the opponent.
That African American, Native American, Latin American and Asian American electorate counts.
Journalists from those groups saw Democratic nominee-to-be Barack Obama up close and personal at Unity, the combined journalism conference for all four minority groups.
They saw him in “Chicago, Chicago, (his) hometown,” which is generously endowed with admirers of the Illinois senator.
Hot item at the conference was the Chicago-based Ebony cover of Obama as “One of the 25 Coolest Brothers of All Time.”
He made the list with music mogul Jay-Z, R&B great Marvin Gaye and “the original heartthrob, Billy Dee,” swooned Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell.
Obama fever soared until an editorial in that paper had to remind readers that campaigns are the news, not just the hometown candidate.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism found the Democrat featured in 78 percent of political stories, according to the paper’s observation. McCain mentions came in at only 51 percent.
An oped piece by Jewel Woods, a “gender analyst” for the Renaissance Male Project, claimed even guys have a crush on Obama. It’s his “white collar masculinity.”
Still another columnist compared the candidate’s foreign policy team with The 300. That would be Sparta’s hero-defenders against Persia in the cult movie featuring Bowflex-product, muscle rippling warriors admired by gamer boys.
What’s the fun of Chicago, if you can’t go over the top?
The attention drove Sen. McCain to mock the press.
But cool as the breeze off Lake Michigan, “Obama sizes up Mideast stage” in a Chicago Tribune headline.
A quote by Trib columnist John Kass called McCain “grumpy.”
Editorial Board member Steve Chapman called the man “confused on Iraq.”
And Trib syndicated writer Jonah Goldberg called his pro-surge strategy on the war a loser as the defining issue of his campaign.
Don’t mess with the hometown candidate in other words.
A couple of days’ look at Chicago papers conjures the Jerry Reed lyric when it comes to Sen. Obama: My luck was so good I could do no wrong.

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