Waiting for Obama

This is a blog post, not a column, so I feel more free to indulge myself and maybe do something usual journalistic jurisprudence frowns on. Bitch.

Since I have been a member of the NAACP every year since at least 1996, I did want to cover at least a portion of the grand daddy of all civil rights organizations.

I also hoped to stand in the room for President Obama's address, which is supposed to start about an hour from the time I am writing this, at 3 p.m.

That's hopeful, as it's already been pushed back an hour to 4 p.m.

I had spent a half-hour in line picking up my credentials for the president's visit, which were in addition to my NAACP credentials. I went through not one, but two, security screenings.

A half-hour before getting in that line, I tried to enter the room to cover the luncheon dealing with veterans' affairs. I was not admitted because I didn't have a ticket.

I explained to the guy at the door press would be admitted to what were called "plated" affairs (food) but we wouldn't get a plate.

That was fine because I ate before I left my office.

The guy at the door politely told me, no dice.

I tried calling a couple of NAACP communications people, but my calls went to voicemail and the voicemail box was full.

I hate when that happens.

I left the luncheon at the Loews and walked to the press office at the convention center. The press office was closed.

I hate when that happens.

I had about 90 minutes to kill before a LGBT workshop, so I visited the exhibitors display hall to kill time. The only booth getting action was Wink & Pout cosmetics stand.

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I walk around the hall and the corridor outside asking random people a question, after introducing myself. Mostly I am talking to well-dressed, successful, middle-class people.

The question is this: What is the single biggest challenge facing African-Americans in America today?

The answers were all over the lot: Racism, acceptance, mobility, opportunity, segregation, mostly economic.

Not a single one mentioned racist police.

Not to say there are none, but the people who spoke to me see a wider, more complicated horizon.

With some notes in my notebook, I get in line for my presidential credentials, kill about a half-hour, then learn the president won't be there for an hour and a half.

I pretty much guess the LGBT workshop will be decimated by going up against the president, and I'm already hot and cranky, so I leave the hall. Do I really have to spend more than an hour with several score of reporters hearing exactly the same thing they do? What's the purpose?

I am really unhappy about not getting into the veterans luncheon because I feel I am personally in the debt of all veterans, and have the utmost respect for black veterans who put their lives on the line to defend a country that did not fully appreciate and honor them. Maybe still doesn't.

I leave the building and step onto the steaming street, having just missed a cloudburst.

I see a couple of Mumidiots, but I'm not in a mood for the circus.

I also see some church people opposing abortion with grisly photos.

I didn't need credentials to speak to the Rev. Clenard Childress, in a black and white "Stop Funding Racism" T-shirt.

We speak. He might be my Friday column.