“Dude, My Party Sucked...Mind If I Crash Yours?”
(Photo of Bob Barr at Netroots Nation—Sat. July 19, 2008 by LowerManhattanite)
While hustling back from a run across the street to the hotel for a left-behind power cable, I was jogging through the Austin Convention center, where I noticed a man being interviewed by several people with mics and cameras.
The gentleman was dapped out in that crisp, bad-ass, Southern style. Blue and white striped shirt, creases starched hard enough to peel carrots, a light-weight blue blazer with brass buttons, perfect dry-cleaned jeans, also creased with diamond hardness, and a pair of chestnut colored leather boots, buffed to a high shine—no scuffs—and a nifty cuban heel.
Homeboy was dap as hell. But as I motored past...I noted how familiar he looked.
And when I suddenly realized who he was, I of course caught a sneaker tread on the carpet and nearly fell on my ass in shock.
It was former Georgia GOP Rep. Bob Barr, one of former President Clinton's most memorable beté noirs of “MonicaGate”—at Netroots Nation. What...in the Wide World of Sports was going on here?
So, I now sprinted over to where I'd left Doc Wendel and my laptop and grabbed my camera, hoping to capture the dap little pimp before he “bamfed” away in a cloud of ash and brimstone. Luckily, he was still holding court and I managed to get a few shots of him—the one running here being the best one. The reason for that is that every time I tried to hold the camera still, I started to chuckle to myself and shake the damned thing.
You see, Bob Barr has long been the butt of many jokes in my family since the ugly winter of 1998. He was such a annoying, little pit bull against Clinton, you just wanted to smack him...but...
There was something odd about him. Something that was “off”.
Media people have noted that “offness” of late, but I will tell you that this has been long discussed in other more insular circles.
Bob Barr, um...well...as my mother said it “Looks a little 'funny' 'round the mouth”.
If he doesn't have some immediate African American lineage somewhere in his blood, then I'm the first cousin of Edgar-fucking-Winter.
Many have picked up on his uncanny resemblance to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (!)
My brothers and sisters...take a peek below, and as they used to say in that old commercial during NFL games “You...make the call...
Dig the lips, folks...That ain't collagen...that's collards and Coltrane.
Funny-ass hair texture too—particularly on the 'stache. “Rev. Al's shit is straighter than Barr's is.” one friend loves to note frequently.
But there Barr was, in all his dap-tastic glory, in the lobby of the Convention Center hosting a gathering of people absolutely four-square against the party he's identified with for the last forever. Why was he here? To be the fly in the ointment for us progresives? That stray “chip” in the sugar cookie? (Kind of a butterscotch chip, if not an all-chocolate accident)
Nah. He just wanted to be where the action was. Because across town where he gangsta-leaned over from is where it clearly wasn't.
AUSTIN — Conservative bloggers are holding their own mini-conference across town in the northern part of this city. And while some have bashed the left and the liberal blogosphere, several are taking cues from the successes of the online left and building out from them.
The Americans for Prosperity Foundation decided to concentrate part of its Texas conference on new media here, (RightOnline.com) and while planning this event, decided to hold it at the same time as the much larger Netroots Nation convention.
That apparently worried a few of the more powerful bloggers on the right, writers who didn’t want comparisons to be made in terms of size and scope, we’re told. And it is much smaller in attendance and even in focus, (with a decidedly libertarian bent to some degree). But the organizers said they never wanted to go “toe-to-toe” – or, perhaps, we’d say from down here, it would be “boot-to-boot” with the Netroots conference.
On the left, the netroots sessions are chock-full of heavy online hitters and the chairman of the Democratic party as well as the Democratic speaker of the House of Representatives are among its keynote guest speakers.
For the right, tonight’s main speakers are columnist Bob Novak and Barry Goldwater Jr.
Um. Yeah. And their heaviest hitters of all were such superstars as RedState's Erick (“Der Banhammer”) Erickson and keynote
So, instead of hanging around the coffee urn in the hotel lounge a little ways north where all 19 of the GOP gathering's attendees caucused such issues as the depth of the anti-immigrant wall at the border (“Five inches! No! Seven! They have claws and can rip through five, easy!”), Barr instead came where the party was poppin' on the day of his big speech before that other “throng”.
Sad, really.
But there Barr was, in all of his decidedly questionable ethnicity glory. Cameras a' clickin'—including mine, and recorders a' rollin' away as he held court where somebody actually gave a rat's ass about him.
Oh wait...there is someplace else where people give a big, fat, hairy rat's ass about him—John McCain campaign headquarters:
Poll finds Barr siphoning votes from McCain
Wednesday, June 25, 2008, 09:39 AM
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
While a poll released late Tuesday by the Los Angeles Times and Bloomberg showed Libertarian Party presidential nominee Bob Barr drawing only 3 percent support, the data show that much of that is coming at the expense of Republican candidate John McCain.
The new national poll shows McCain trailing Democrat Barack Obama 37 percent to 49 percent when the race is just between the two major party candidates. But when Barr, a former Georgia congressman, and independent candidate Ralph Nader are added to the mix, Obama’s margin jumps to 15 percentage points, 48 percent to 33 percent.
Seems there's a good chance my dear ol' Uncle Bobbeh (That's what us folks call him at the family reunions, you know...) has a pretty good chance of Perot/Nader-izing John McCain's odds of being President that much deeper into the sticky muck of impossibility, based on polling in states where the would-be jet demolisher-in-chief needs every damned vote. Oooops!
I suppose the lone saving grace for McCain is that he can probably save campaign money by not having to come up with a separate series of attack ads against Barr.
I mean...he could just simply recycle the subliminally racist ones he's going to be trotting out against Obama, right?
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