"We've gotta give them light."
On Oct 31, 2008, the weekend before a majority of US voters elected Chicagoan Barack Obama to be the 44th President of the United States, Americans lost another great Chicagoan when Studs Terkel -- the honest, chatty, folksy turbine of the long-form interview -- passed away. I was thinking of Terkel today when I read this wonderful anecdote from Joe Biden about quarry swimming in his youth.
It's great to have a VPOTUS who values candor, unfiltered enthusiasm, and direct experience like Jawbone Joe does.
Tradmed goons who are afraid of their own shadows -- and who would never give up the moment to take a broad leap into the unknown -- like to give Biden guff for his little crowd-wise winks and these explosive moments of abstract and lateral thinking. But I for one love our folksy gallant, and I love when he speaks from the gut.
"The frightening part was you go down really far, I mean literally really far. So deep it's totally black. Your chest constricts, you panic and you don't know whether you're swimming down or up.
"But when you get about 12 to 14 feet from the top you see light and everything is OK. You're still 12 feet underwater, but it's OK. You see light."
"That's the American people, man. We've gotta give them light," VPOTUS said, strolling away from the podium, into the audience, and pointing with both hands toward a sun-lit skylight above the center of the room.
Keep jumpin', Joe!