The Forgotten Closet of Obama Night Phone Calls: Sex, Lies, & Audiotape
I just opened an old storage unit and you would not believe what fell out
Are you ready for the truly bizarre? A trip down America we have entirely forgotten?
Last week, I got a form letter from Typepad, the blogging platform where I once spent 16 years writing.
Typepad’s ghosts are shutting down their archives, my archives. Their admin advised us, “Grab your children before we burn this down.”
I’m paraphrasing.
I wrote almost daily on Typepad from the day my mother died in 2004— to the last whimper of 2020, when the Zuck-Musk juggernaut sucked all the oxygen out of long-form “blogging.”
Well, now we get to the WEIRD part.
I forgot how much I left behind.
I had not one, but six blogs running. One of them was called Random Honest Porn Review, which in hindsight was the funniest. My absurdist triumph.
Another brainchild was my audiobook review blog, The Bright List, which was the first audiobook criticism ever, on the internet.
It started in 2012 when I was asked to be an editor at Audible. I was flabbergasted that they didn’t (yet) have a publicity system. There were no reviews! No editorial comment!
At the time, most people I talked to, told me with great condescension, ‘Audiobooks are for the blind.” I wanted so much to bring the beauty of listening to stories, everywhere.
My Little Susie Homebreaker blog was the most successful of my spin-offs.
I was a semi-pro dressmaker at the time, an enthusiastic home chef, and a staff sewing writer for CRAFT magazine. Honestly, the best magazine gig I ever had.
I published two party recipes which went viral: my holiday eggnog, and my Sunday Gravy.
To this day, I meet people at Xmas, who tell me, “I’m still making your eggnog after 20 years.”
Okay, I’ve saved the best for last. My main Typepad blog was Susie Bright’s Journal, same as here on the Stack.
In the early 00’s, I had a rudimentary method for recording phone calls. I offered a public phone number, which I would give out to ANYONE . . . Yes. And get this! —I never got spam. Ever!
But I did get a lot of “perfect strangers” who called and poured their hearts out.
I decided on the November night of the 2007 Presidential Election, when Obama/Biden ran against McCain/Palin, that I would take first-person observations all night.
I asked people to call me from whereever they were, and tell me what they were seeing on the street.
What follows below are some of those audio witnesses.
I will begin with my late mother-in-law, Pat Cottrell, who said she hadn’t seen this kind of joyous wonder on the streets since Joe Lewis won the heavyweight championship in 1937.
Now, if you had told any of my election callers in 2008, that in 17 years we would be living under a fascist dictatorship and death cult—
Well, forget it. There was no Cassandra that astute.
Or was there? I hear hints in some of the calls below, that I contemplate differently.
Honey Lee Cottrell, my late partner and Pat’s daughter, got a new camera, because she knew something big was going to happen. I miss her so much. Honey was not a “regular voter” to say the least . . .
The legendary Sandy Stone, calling from Austin TX:
Mobile, Alabama voter: “My aunt just looked me dead in the eye and said, “I’m just going to vote for someone WHITE.” But she was working the polls in the Mobile Black community and saw quite a different scene.
C.S. Lewis from upstate NY was listening to McCain’s concession speech which he says is “absolutely rhapsodic . . . about Obama.
I talked with Barry Fidlow, who was a poll watcher in a little red dot outside of Chicago. His mother wrote in “Hillary.” He predicted Obama will be far more centrist than his voters expect.
David in New Zealand talked about the whole world was watching the United States’ 2008 election, champagne at the ready.
They watch us today, too, for a horrific reason:
Sue Katz, author of The Author’s Guide to Sarah Palin, said she was strangely weepy. “When I think about the racism I grew up with . . .”
DJ “Downtown” Donna was on the raucous streets of San Francisco, and remembers the 60s, Black Power, all of it:
Melvin from Pittsburgh, said it was like the Super Bowl and Christmas all rolled into one. His Black family, all the women, crying. “The end of the beginning and the beginning of the end . . .”
Steve Harsin called from hardcore Blue voting base, a Labor stronghold, the Iron Range in Minnesota. He was amazed how many of his normally Democratic neighbors were voting against Obama because they said, “He’s going to take our guns.” Hahahaha.
In California, the same November night Obama won, Proposition 8 was on the ballot, designed to condemn and outlaw gay marriage— which since 2000, had been accepted by the state courts. The bigots won.
My bestie from high school, Kim Anno, reporting on the Christian right relentlessness, and how they were using Obama’s voice (he was against gay marriage in the beginning, you may remember) on robo-calls to agitate for anti-gay vote:
Alan Young, from the Graduate Theological Union, was about to officiate a wedding, and was optimistic:
Lulu Belliveau, my friend and former On Our Backs photo editor, is an expat in South London. She was thinking about her Nicaraguan/African American son, and how much Obama meant to him. Her Nico family: all staunch Republicans. When I asked about her mom, Lulu spoke about how Hispanic emigrés in America, like her mom, came to the US thinking of Republicans as the epitome of the American Dream.
I’ll let my friend and mentor from high school, Michael Letwin, have the last word:
“I just heard David Axelrod, Obama's advisor, saying, “The people are turning out in such numbers because they so desperately want change— and that Obama's going to give it to them.”
“And I definitely agree with the first part of that.
Michael, do you remember where you were in 1968? That’s the last time I remember a presidential election this consequential.
“Oh, I remember that well. There was the trauma of the war and King and RFK had been assassinated.
I went through my electoral phase when I was 12, when I was into Gene McCarthy's campaign, and then I supported Tom Bradley's launch to be the first black mayor of Los Angeles. I worked on that and the 18-year-old vote, all of it.
“But by 13, you know, I'd become a revolutionary. . .
If Typepad hadn’t pulled the plug on my archives, I wouldn’t have unearthed these telling moments.
The witnesses are whispering in my ear, LISTEN UP.
Okay, I’m paying attention. I hear your voices.
What are you saying now?
You are an entire gale force weather system! I mean that as the deepest compliment with the utmost respect. And I am so with you, the joy of listening to a story? Unbeatable.
I felt about Obama’s election as I did about 9/11. Same old shit dressed up in fancy clothes. Wall Street rule. Terrorism due to political impotence.