Barack Obama 08

Barack Obama
First Visit Toledo
(Scroll for Links and Photographs)

Nearly 15,000 come to the University of Toledo's
Savage Hall to be inspired by this youthful
rock star of modern Presidential politics.
About a third of them are turned away because
there is no more room inside. Long lines snake
up and down the Ottawa River's embankments.
Not unlike pilgrims to a grotto, they wait for hours in
the cold with placards and patience-- a hope and a
prayer. Out of the biting wind, off of the freezing
concrete, past the sniffing German shepherds,
through the metal detectors, waving wands
and coat-check cops the crowd meanders on
through assigned ropes and gates to the basketball
arena which is temporarily transformed for their
political and religious pleasures into a makeshift
altar and speaker's podium. VIPs sit in special
sections while others either stand or search-out the
coveted bleacher seats. The nosebleed section fills last with
the body-heat hanging there like a dizzying hot sauna.
Old and young in wheelchairs are ushered up-front
where the Mariachi singers and the dancers, the gospel choir
and the jazz band flourish in the blazing klieg lights.
Staking-out a base camp on the media risers,
sandwiched in between CBS TV-11's Dick Berry
and the ABC World News Tonight crew, CamericaTV absorbs
the media event that appears to be more of a religious
revival or a rock-concert-mosh-pit than that of a political rally.

(Click Picture to Enlarge)