Tom Baldwin: History? It’s enough to make you cry your eyelashes off
[Tom Baldwin is a Times journalist.]
Whenever the Denver Broncos get a touchdown, a blonde woman dressed as a cowgirl charges across the pitch astride a white horse waving her arms furiously in celebration. It is doubtful, however, that their mile-high Invesco Field stadium has ever witnessed a spectacle or sent such a roar into the Rocky Mountain night sky as that which greeted Barack Obama.
It was a pulsing, flag-waving, screaming, weeping, beachball-tossing, camera-flashing mass comprised of 84,000 human beings. The chant of “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” rolled around one side, U! S! A!, U! S! A!" across the other.
This was the moment for which they had queued for up to three hours in the heat, passed through endless top-heavy security – was it really necessary for the National Guard to turn up in Humvees? – only to discover that the awful stadium food and overpriced water was in short supply. Unlike Broncos games, there was no beer.
“I think this is, in all probability,” said Jennifer Williams, 26, “the single most amazing thing that has happened to me in my life, ever.” Really? “We’re making history!”
And there he was, illuminated by more than 450 spotlights, striding down a blue-carpeted stage decorated with Classical-style columns made of plywood. Republicans had been busy sneering at the Temple of Obama – “Barackopolis” – advising those attending to wear togas and robes. His advisers denied that the stage was meant to be anything so hubristic. No, it was designed to resemble the White House. So that was all right, then.
Mr Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for President in front of a crowd even bigger than that of John F. Kennedy in Los Angeles 48 years ago. The first black man to be nominated by a major party for President, the son of a Kenyan goat herder who spent some his childhood in Indonesia, wanted to tell an Everyman American story...
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Whenever the Denver Broncos get a touchdown, a blonde woman dressed as a cowgirl charges across the pitch astride a white horse waving her arms furiously in celebration. It is doubtful, however, that their mile-high Invesco Field stadium has ever witnessed a spectacle or sent such a roar into the Rocky Mountain night sky as that which greeted Barack Obama.
It was a pulsing, flag-waving, screaming, weeping, beachball-tossing, camera-flashing mass comprised of 84,000 human beings. The chant of “Yes, we can! Yes, we can!” rolled around one side, U! S! A!, U! S! A!" across the other.
This was the moment for which they had queued for up to three hours in the heat, passed through endless top-heavy security – was it really necessary for the National Guard to turn up in Humvees? – only to discover that the awful stadium food and overpriced water was in short supply. Unlike Broncos games, there was no beer.
“I think this is, in all probability,” said Jennifer Williams, 26, “the single most amazing thing that has happened to me in my life, ever.” Really? “We’re making history!”
And there he was, illuminated by more than 450 spotlights, striding down a blue-carpeted stage decorated with Classical-style columns made of plywood. Republicans had been busy sneering at the Temple of Obama – “Barackopolis” – advising those attending to wear togas and robes. His advisers denied that the stage was meant to be anything so hubristic. No, it was designed to resemble the White House. So that was all right, then.
Mr Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for President in front of a crowd even bigger than that of John F. Kennedy in Los Angeles 48 years ago. The first black man to be nominated by a major party for President, the son of a Kenyan goat herder who spent some his childhood in Indonesia, wanted to tell an Everyman American story...