30 Seconds of Fame

As I mentioned in my last post, I did a group interview with NPR's All Things Considered but was not sure if I was going to make it in. Turns out that they did pick 3 comments from our group, and yes, one of mine was included.

They had contacted a friend of mine because they were looking to get the “mothers’ perspective” on Sarah Palin. There were about 9 or 10 of us, pretty evenly mixed Democrats, Republicans and Independents. We talked for over an hour about lots of aspects of the election and Sarah Palin which they distilled down to about 5 minutes (they also talked to 2 other groups of Virginia women). Needless to say, they cut quite a bit out!

I will say that I was a bit disappointed (as was my friend Missy and some of the other women in the group) that they did seem to focus mostly on the fluff of people's reactions to Sarah Palin rather than some of the meatier political issues we got into. But Sarah Palin and our reactions to her were the main focus of the program, so that is what they went with.

They had originally hoped to do a story about women who had shifted from Obama to McCain because of Palin, but they could not find any! Which made it doubly interesting that they found two women for the story that were considering McCain but had gone over to Obama because of Palin.

And I got a kick out of being called a "young mother"...I guess I will take that as a complement seeing as I just turned 40 and my kids are 11 and 8 years old. Our group did have some young mothers with young children, but not all of us were, that is for sure.

All in all it was a lot of fun to do and I am glad that I did it. I also found out how many of my friends listen to NPR! I had phone calls and emails from folks letting me know that they had heard it.

Oh, and in another quick political note...looks like Virginia Republicans are having a minority outreach rally this weekend. And guess who is a featured speaker...former Senator George Allen. Go figure. Gotta love my state.