Last Sunday, I contributed $100 to Barack Obama’s campaign. As good as I felt about this, I have to confess, I was also a little embarrassed. Because the thing is, I had already donated. Just five days before.
My first donation was inspired by Sarah Palin’s bespectacled, be-banged appearance on the scene. She kills what? Wolves? From where? Not from helicop— really? I ran to my laptop and urgently clicked away 50 bucks. I was a good citizen. Done.
But then a week later I got an email inviting me to an Obama fundraiser at a friend’s house. Plentiful food and booze were promised. The catch? A minimum donation of $100. The Thrifty Adult in me knew that donating twice was neither a good idea nor really necessary. But then the Curious Single Lady in me whispered, “You should go. Because, you know…you never know. You might meet someone.” Thrifty Me raised her voice, the same way John McCain does when he calls Cindy a cunt. (Google it.) I ignored the voice (just like Cindy probably does) and clicked away $100 more. And that’s when it dawned on me—I can’t be the only one doing this.
The stadium in Denver pulsed with the power of bHarmony. Packed to the rafters with excited young people hugging and dancing to Stevie Wonder, the overall feeling in the air, compared with the Republicans, was, well…hornier.
Obama’s grassroots campaign has been setting records for individual donations, inspiring people who’ve never before participated in politics to organize calling parties and fundraising barbecues. All along I’ve assumed the reason for this enthusiasm is Obama himself, but with this flurry of Evites beckoning strangers to go to people’s houses and socialize, I’ve begun to wonder: Sure, people want to help Obama, but are a bunch of them equally committed to hooking up? Sort of like eHarmony, but without that creepy old homophobe from the commercials lecturing us on the 29 dimensions of compatibility. Who needs him when there’s the undeniable compatibility that is the shared passion for Barack? Call it bHarmony.
You could feel it on the last night of the Democratic convention. Whereas the Republican proceedings buzzed with all the sexual energy of a Christian Science reading room, the stadium in Denver pulsed with the power of bHarmony. Packed to the rafters with excited young people hugging and dancing to Stevie Wonder, the overall feeling in the air, compared with the Republicans, was, well…hornier. During the whole last hour leading up to Obama’s speech, I was in my living room chewing on ice cubes.
So how many of us are attending fundraisers with not entirely pure thoughts? How many of us are seduced by the notion that in a room full of people supporting Barack, maybe we’ll meet guys who are at least a bit like Barack himself. Thoughtful, charming, a bit gangly, yet possessing the grace of a gazelle (a gazelle you want to text message with late into the night). I imagine the straight guys out there who are attending phone bank parties are really hoping to meet their Michelles. Sure, they want to call long lists of swing state-based agoraphobics, but isn’t the perk the possibility that they might meet beautiful, fiercely intelligent women with super-adorable underbites while doing so? After all, the Republican convention was chockablock with McCain doppelgangers. If I were desperately looking to meet a pallid curmudgeon whose soul evaporated the day Ronald Reagan died, that would have been my hot spot.
We love Barack because he is promising us universal health care, tax breaks for working people, and other stuff that sounds good and right and decent. But do a lot of us also love him because supporting his campaign seems to offer the potential for love itself? Or at the very least, a hot one-night stand with a Stevie Wonder soundtrack.
So, November 4: “Ribbon in the Sky,” anyone?
