Even diapers need a change: Obama in Boston

When your political platform is "change", doesn't offering more of the same seem counter-intuitive? Apparently not to Barack Obama, who delivered his Super Tuesday pre-mortem speech from Boston last night, in front of a crowd that CNN called "a mosh pit" -- but which those of us who were actually on the floor called "a yawn fest". Don't believe everything you hear on TV: Barack may or may not be about to shock the world, but this prime-time appearance wasn't the slam-dunk the media made it out to be. Obama talked on and on . . . and on . . . about the same shit he always does, even cracking some of the same jokes he did the last time he was in Boston, rallying on the Common. Hey Barack, that one about you being related to Cheney? Heard it in the fall, buddy. And that one about Republicans whispering in your ear? Heard that one, too. Oh, and that one about how you are sick and tired of the current administration's policies, and you're going to end the war and boost health care initiatives, and you're the one candidate who can finally turn this country around? It's like an echo that tumbles infinitely in the eardrums of America.

Two hours earlier, standing in a sea of hipsters at South Station, waiting for the Silver Line to arrive, I could have been in the midst of a throng of Pill-heads en route to Great Scott. It was as if someone had substuted "Obama for Change" t-shirts and pins for cutesy-nerd glasses and ironic urban-outfitted faux vintage duds, as busload after busload of fresh young things headed to the World Trade Center to throw their hands in the air for the man of change himself. Stepping off by the WTC, I was greeted by signs that read "This Way For Change!" Wonder if the homeless folks were delighted, then, confused. 

Obama may talk a mean change game, but on the floor of the WTC, the biggest "change" of the evening was of the Pampers-and-powder variety. No joke: right on the floor, in the middle of the rally, some dude took the call literally, swapping his baby's dirty diaper for a clean one. Take that, politics! 

-- Sara Faith Alterman