There's always been a touch of meta in Obama's famous "fired up/ready to go" story. (Anyone who hasn't heard it can watch him tell it here. Fast forward to about 2:50.) In the couple of weeks since I last saw him, though, the meta's gone off the charts. Here's how he wrapped it up today:
For the rest of the day, even after I left Green
villewood, every time I saw my staff, I said, "Are you fired up?" They said, "We're fired up! Are you ready to go, Senator?" "I'm ready to go!" That used to be where the story ended, but it's taken a life of its own. Because I told this story, and people liked it. So they started making T-shirts saying, "I'm fired up." ... People started doing the chant everywhere we went. The Wall Street Journal wrote an article about this woman. A feature article. Then we go down to South Carolina, 30,000 people chant fired up ... I'm there with Oprah, Oprah's chanting [the crowd yells, "Fired up!"]. It goes to show you how one voice can change a room...
Sounds like Barack Obama may be our first post-modern president. (Okay, maybe our second post-modern president. But the first in a good way.)
P.S. To get a little meta myself, this post shows why you should probably read Ben Smith before you read me. Ben listens for actual news--he seems to have provoked a minor Clinton-Obama smackdown with this item from the same event--whereas I can be relied upon to get sidetracked by random stuff.
--Noam Scheiber