Hominid Views

My only previous chance to see Bill Clinton was in 1996 when he spoke at my PhD graduation ceremony at Penn State University. Unfortunately, I was delivering a talk of my own at a professional confrence in New Orleans that day.

So I gladly accepted the opportunity to attend the We the People event on Moday night at Benaroya Hall. The event was a fundraiser for Rep. Jim McDermott that featured “special guest” Bill Clinton. Someone had the terrific idea to give bloggers press access to the event. Cool!

My favorite recap comes from TheHim at Blog Reload:

One thing about this event that made me laugh was that the order of the events correlated with how much each event would piss off the average Republican:

Garfield High School band – OK
Dude playing a guitar in an unorthodox way – Mildly annoying
Band with foreigners – Very annoying
Air America host Thom Hartmann – Extremely annoying
Jim McDermott – Downright infuriating
Big Dog – Inducing homicidal rage

The guitarist was Stanley Jordan and the “band with foreigners” was Children of the Revolution. Both gave stunning performances.

Clinton was simply awsome. I could only marvel at how smart and literate he was.

The only down-side to Clinton’s address was that it deepend my humiliation over the ignorant and illiterate person that replaced him.

Hey…folks…we cannot ever let this kind of thing happen again. Really! Maybe a simple reading comprehension test should be required for presidential candidates.

You know…we could start a No President Left Behind testing program.

…back to the event. I found so many good write-ups from my fellow bloggers that I’ll simply point to a few:

• Lynn at Evergreen Politics
• Mollie at The (liberal)Girl Next Door
• Andrew at NPI
• Will at Pike Place Politics
• The dude from homesteadbook.com

Coolist surprise at the event: finding myself seated next to McJoan!