Ellen Plays "Wizard of Oz" at Hillary's GWU Rally

It was doubly fitting that Hillary Clinton should grab a much-needed ball of flame from Ellen "Yep, I'm Gay" DeGeneres, who made a surprise big-screen appearance onstage yesterday evening during Hillary's fundraiser rally at George Washington University here in D.C. ($200,000 raised, mostly at $25 a pop).

First: It was 1997, after all, at the height of the Bill Clinton presidency, when Ellen came out publicly as a lesbian. Second: Fitting because the audience tonight was packed with gay Hillary supporters. (How do I know? I just do.)

I'll spare you a long, tortured "Wizard of Oz" analogy ("Pay no attention to that lesbian behind the curtain!"), but the scene just evoked it symbolically and visually, with little Dorothy/Hillary (she is tiny!) bravely imploring the Great and Powerful Oz/Ellen to help send her "home" (back to Kansas/back to the White House)...

Ellen's joking "tough question" to Hillary was whether Hillary would promise to ban glitter. I would advise quite the contrary: Hillary needs to throw gobs of it around the stage when she debates Barack tonight. Glitter, or fairy dust, or do some ruby-slipper heel-clicking ... something ... because Barack's got the poppies ready ...

This event was clearly intended to gain Hillary some youthful new supporters, and including this unexpected Ellen DeGeneres Show satellite taping was quite smart in that GWU was likely buzzing after the rally with students who went home to their dorms and said, "We're going to be on Ellen tomorrow, you guys! I was there! Look for me!"

It was cool. And just in the nick of time, too.

I got there at 4:55, and waited about half an hour in line. Someone (police? Hillary organizers?) unfairly split the line and sent the back half up to the front to form a second line. I just jumped out of my half and joined the stream of cut-takers. Then my friend Will jumped out of a cab in front of Lisner Auditorium and joined me, thus also taking cuts. Lyndon LaRouche's (young!) acolytes were there singing something against the backdrop of an anti-Michael Bloomberg (??) banner. Three anti-Hillary supporters were listlessly stationed across the street with two posters ("Hell No, Hillary").

We got in pretty fast, then sat for about an hour and watched the rakish Jake Tapper floating somehow in front of the ABC News camera above a stairwell to our left, bathed in light, being prepped and BlackBerrying.

At one point Will (who is a diehard Hillary supporter) admitted, "Hillary's kids aren't as cool as Barack's." I started to ask what he meant, but he just pointed at the stage where, as "A Change Would Do You Good" by Sheryl Crow played, the two bleachers full of students were ... undulating, I guess? In the way that people who can't dance undulate. The kid holding the preposterous sign "Our Generation, Our Candidate: Hillary" was looking down at his sign in seeming bafflement.

Hillary took the stage exactly half an hour late (not too bad) with Ed Rendell, the governor of Pennsylvania, who gave her a froggy-voiced, rousing intro geared toward pointing out that he hoped his state would be in the bag for Hillary by this time in two weeks.

We were sitting with Will's friend David and David's friend Michael. Michael kept yelling supportive things out while Hillary talked, but she seemed to knowingly welcome the (jarring, to my ears three feet away) interruptions, each of which led the crowd to start cheering again and broke up what would otherwise be just a lecture.

Even in small ways Hillary knows how to manage expectations, even in a rally. She promised to talk for "a few minutes," and I feared this would truly be just a drive-by/rip-off, but she talked for at least 40 minutes (including the Ellen exchange), and stayed for another good 20 minutes signing autographs and shaking hands. She had also begun by pulling out a folded sheet of paper, and I thought, "Oh, no..." but a moment later she put it back in her pocket.

While there were lots of applause lines, her biggest moment centered around something this crowd cared about foremost: Making college affordable. She told how when she went to law school, she worked, but also took out a loan at 2% interest (the crowd gasped), and gradually paid it back. She wants to make it easy like that again, and let people work off their loans through service, etc.

I like it when she tells stories. She also needed to grab someone from the audience and talk to them, as Bill would have done. But she's too careful for that. As someone in my row said, "She's connecting with the crowd, but through someone else (Ellen)."

Indeed, the entire Ellen thing was completely scripted, you could tell. But I will forgive that because the overall effect was one of a delightful surprise. We need some more fun surprises like this from the Clinton campaign. At the debate last week, I kept waiting for her to go all ninja on Barack, to say things that would make me, a tough debate-watching customer, get excited. To surprise me. But she just harped again on Barack's supposed 15 million uninsured under his health insurance plan.

I liked what I saw of Hillary tonight, she was poised and smooth, a real pro, as expected. But she really needs to display all her courage, brains and heart for the Ohio debate. The hourglass is running out fast.

Comments

[dannyS]

As long as Hillary doesn't try to dance like Ellen, she should be OK.

[dhorowitz]

Well captured, Scott. As someone who was in attendance that night, I can definitely agree that the rally and Ellen's surprise visit brought energy and humor to the campaign.

PVD2SFO is right. I, too, am supporting Hillary because she is the candidate who offers us more than just "glitter". "Glitter" is all Obama seems to be capable of offering, unfortunately. Hope and idealism are very tempting dishes after 8 years of Bush's poisonous lies and war crimes -- so it does not surprise me that the masses and the zeitgeist and the energy have all chugged that Kool-Aid.

But brush the "glitter" aside, and there's nothing there. Obama's proposals are substantially content-free, and politically naive. How will they be funded - and passed - despite the hostile political environments and special interests that he likes to pretend won't exist under his Magical Presidency?

He has no experience with any of this -- a groovy speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention and 2 years in the US Senate (without anything stellar to show for it) don't count for much, as far as I'm concerned. If Obama were to become President and try to pass health care reform, the health insurance industry would eat him for breakfast. Hillary, on the other hand, knows exactly what went wrong last time around, and knows precisely what will be needed to succeed in getting things passed this time around.

She has marched into the Senate, made peace with her husband's tormentors, and built coalitions that succeeded in getting work done. What does Obama have on his resume that even remotely compares?

[pvd2sfo]

You know what is amazing to me? The hate and venom that Obama supporters seem to have for Hillary Clinton. Not one of them can seem to articualte their message or point of view without attacking her in some way. I think it speaks to the type of supporters that Senator Obama seems to be attracting so well.

I was at the UVA rally in Richmond a few weeks ago and there were male Obama supporters holding up signs that read "bro's b4 ho's". These students are our future? To me it is alarming that we live in a society that has chosen to back seat substance for what appears to be "idol" worship. It is simply shameful!

As an Independent voter, I personally would rather have a President of substance rather then one of mere style and "glitter".

[mrpbrks]

I think its an interesting notion that each candidate have a personal wizard. Obama has already declared his in Will Smith, of whom he told Entertainment Tonight he has already discussed for the role of Barak Obama in the upcoming Spike Lee movie about his life "The Hope of Hope." Personally I would have chosen Denzel Washington who I think can more accurately portray the ambiguity that is a part of Obama's personality. Smith is the cocky psuedo who has never really grown up. Washington is the svelte serious hearthrob who like Obama is much more the star because of who he is rather than what he can do or has done.

John McCain? That to me is an easy one. Eddie Albert, the former star of the TV Series "Green Acres." Heck, McCain's wife is a total shoe in for Zsa Zsa Gabor. But Albert, like so much of McCain's inspiration and ideas is dead and buried. How unfortunate McCain could not have chosen his former boyfriend Ronald Reagan who probably would have chosen Humphrey Bogart who probaly would have become President if he lived long enough. Instead for McCain, I suppose, we must be stuck with that old right wing icon Charlton Heston the former CEO of the NRA. No one else I know in Hollywood can play the boring, supplicating and changeable McCain. "I sold my ass for you people, I shut down a huge portion of my brain called common sense just so I could be here today. Yes, I'm old, but it does not mean I am wise." I can't think of another good Hollywood loser who could be the Wizard for McCain.

Who would be the Wizard of Huckabee? He has already chosen Chuck Norris, but I would like to see it be John Lithgow. Part of the appeal is that he is a comedian and Huckabee is "tongue in cheek." Yet, with Lithgow you can never tell if he is serious or just being portentious about his own rhetoric. I get the sense that Huckabee also gets drunk with words and I could just imagine Lithgow looking down on him and ordering him to go forth and articulate, squabble, debate and eat key lime pie on every occasion possible!

[Sal123]

Hillary is getting ridiculous. She's referring people to SNL as a journalistic authority, and now she thinks Ellen, a COMEDIAN host, can help her. Look, if you want to talk substance, Hillary hasn't got any. She's had 7 years in senate to Obama's 12, she's sponsored 20 bills to Obama's over 800, she's voted for war in Iraq and refused to call it a mistake, and now, with Kyle-Lierberman, she's essentially voted for war in Iran. Hillary is no Dianne Feinstein, no Nancy Pelosi- she's just Mrs. Clinton. She's not going to be the only woman to run for president, and she doesn't represent women at all. Read their records and compare: Obama is simply the better person for the job by far.

[dhorowitz]

Sal123, it's great to be enthusiastic about one's candidate, but I would caution against spreading misinformation. I'm not sure where you get your numbers regarding "substance", but they're not correct.

Sen. Clinton has been a US Senator for 7 years (since 2001). It is misleading to state that Sen. Obama has been "in the senate" for 12 years. He has actually been in the US Senate for only 3 years (since 2005). He was in the IL State Senate for 8. It's also quite a big leap to go from the IL State Senate to campaigning for the US Presidency -- State Senate and US Senate experience are hardly the same thing. (The information about terms in office comes from both the candidates' own official biographies on their Presidential Campaign and US Senatorial Web sites.)

Turning next to bill sponsorships, again, your numbers are misleading. While it is true that Sen. Obama sponsored over 800 bills in his 8 years in the Illinois State Senate (Source: The New York Times, and Legislative Information System, Illinois General Assembly), Sen. Obama has sponsored only 113 bills and resolutions in the US Senate. Sen. Clinton has sponsored 151 bills and resolutions in the US Senate -- not 20, as you state. (Source: THOMAS, the legislative information system of the Library of Congress.)

[Didi47]

I'd like to know why the author of this article started it with mentioning that Ellen is a lesbian at least 5 times before the end of the second paragraph?

What does that have to do with Ellen supporting Hillary???

How creepy can you get?

[shrake]

Sorry you found it creepy. It wasn't intentional. I was planning to write more about Hillary's "fave" status among gay people of a certain age (like, over 30?) when I started writing, but kind of changed my focus as I wrote. That said, I DO think Ellen's sexual orientation has a lot to do with her support of Hillary. And she's also a prime candidate for someone who "misses Bill," to paraphrase the bumper sticker "I Miss Bill."

[MariaHopeful]

Ellen asked whether people were being harder on Hillary because she is a woman. I do so pray that people would get off that one. Nobody is picking on Hillary because she is a woman. There are a number of women Governors (unlike AA). There gender was never a problem when they ran. We have Jodie Rell here in CT and I would vote for her in a minute as she is a beautiful and inspiring woman. The problem is Hillary, not her gender. Or put another way, Hillary's problem is Barack Obama who is just so much more appealing.

[Orikinla]

I have a crush on Ellen.
She would have made a great difference if she had come on the Hillary Clinton's campaign bandwagon earlier.

Only God can give the presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton and as we say in church, God works in mysterious ways and God can use anybody anytime and anywhere.

Hillary Clinton needs the audacity of faith more now than Barack Obama's audacity of hope.

May God make it happen for Hillary Clinton.

[shrake]

That's what I'm saying: "Let go, and let God!"

[pgate127]

Our challenge is that the Obama Camp is setting up their candidate as God, complete with miracles. Praise the Lord and pass the collection plate.

[pgate127]

Well, THANK YOU, Ellen!

Am expecting to see 300 posts about Clinton and Don't Ask Don't Tell here, so I just thought I'd get a jump on them with this comment:

You think Bill Clinton bailed on gay people when he signed Don't Ask Don't Tell? As opposed to who? The other 41 United States Presidents who took the issue on AT ALL?

Please. Give me a break. If you think anyone--especially The Great And Powerful Barry--can wave a magic wand and "change" anything in this country, without working hard to put the pieces of the puzzle together, you're drinking too much KoolAid. Change, in this country, is predicated on hard work for baby steps that eventually lead to great leaps. Would that it was different, but it isn't, simply because there are so many of us with so many different views.

I've watched Hillary Clinton march down 5th Avenue in the Gay Pride parade as the Senator from New York, and I'm planning on cheering my guts out when she does it as President of the United States.

[usedwigs]

Ed Rendell was there? Must have been good food.

Can't believe you cut in line. The cool Obama kids wouldn't have done that.

[WandaBooneshaft]

Well, your 100% wrong about that. I was at a Obama rally with 18,000 of my closest friends and relatives (humor) -- the majority of which cut in line in front of me. I got there early, stood in line and they just walked right up and jumped in line in front of me. And it wasn't just "kids." Their mamas and daddies and brothers and sisters and uncles and nieces and nephews and grandpas and grandmas just tagged right along with them. It was disgusting.

[WillBower]

Yes, I did indeed say that Obama kids are cooler.

That said, however, Clinton kids are still cuter.

[dhorowitz]

The Clinton kids are cuter, it's true.