Letter to Sam

As I follow your liveblogging of the presidential debate, I'm reminded of the time in college when we were mistakenly invited to the White House Universal Healthcare pitch to talk radio people during the early days of the Clinton administration. I'm not thinking about the second day when Tom Brokaw rubbed my back or our rude brush with Mr. WOLF who-the-fuck-ever-blitzer. I'm thinking about what we were wearing on the first day. I was wearing a pea-soup green and black houndstooth blazer two sizes too big that my grandmother gave me. You didn't own a tie and I said I'd get one from one of my ex or current boyfriends, but forgot. B was there too and I don't remember what she was wearing, but she was a college Republican so surely she owned a plethora of suitable outfits. When we got to DC we bought you a tie off the street. When we got to DC we discovered none of us knew how to tie a tie. Well, you said you did, but it would take an hour to knot it. When we got to DC we stood in the security line outside of the Old Executive Building with all the other talk show hosts as you held your tie in your hand slowly making your knot. B snapped, "Either put that tie on or put it away, you look ridiculous." Inside the Old Executive Building we heard from a lot of top level officials and learned that Tipper Gore loved to roller blade and when she roller bladed she listened to the RADIO. Inside the Old Executive Building, a talk show host implied President Bill Clinton had a venereal disease during the Q&A with Donna Shalala. Then he got into a shouting match with another host and told him to go to hell. Then Donna Shalala, who was standing on a box so she could reach the microphone, told them both to sit down and shut up. While we waited a really long time for President Bill Clinton to appear, the talk show hosts yelled they wanted lunch. While we waited a really long time for President Bill Clinton to appear, B kept telling the other talk show hosts that we were college talk radio hosts. I snapped, "Shut up B, we can fool these assholes."