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Tuesday: Call me bitter
posted at 2008-09-16 23:20 | Last modified 2008-09-17 09:02
I got this campaign email today from Michelle Obama. (Really.)
"Laura --
It's hard to believe there are less than 50 days before Election Day.
Just not on the radio, apparently.
This afternoon, I had a call from an Obama staffer in NC, wondering if I’d be interested in a face-to-face interview with Michelle Obama when she comes to the Triad Thursday. Well, yes, obviously. So I got a time and date and made plans accordingly.
Less than an hour later, said staffer called back, all apologies. The invite was rescinded. “Michelle doesn’t do news radio. It never occurred to me she wouldn’t talk to public radio, either.”
Me, neither. Seriously. I mean, I get why she wouldn’t clear her schedule for a chat with Limbaugh or Stern. But public radio? Can you imagine a friendlier crowd?
As of last year, at least, she couldn’t, either. I pointed out to said press person that she’d given lots of interviews to various public radio stations in 2007. “Yeah, I know,” I was told. “But things changed after the primary.”
At the risk of sounding bitter (and in the spirit of full disclosure, I sort of am), this is a boneheaded move by the national team. If, as we’ve been told, the whole point of Michelle Obama’s “women’s roundtable” tour is to pull independent white women back into the Obama fold, public radio offers a darned good shot at reaching that demographic.
Did anyone on the Obama team bother to research the difference between Rush Limbaugh’s audience and ours? Or is it the "arugula factor" -- is public radio just too “elitist”?
All I can say is if Cindy McCain or Todd Palin shows up here, I’m in -- and I'm so asking about arugula.
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