As you know, I won two free tickets from
Joe.My.God to the
Speaker Series at Radio City Music Hall.
Anderson Cooper would be interviewing
Mike Huckabee,
Arianna Huffington, and
D.L.Hugley live onstage.
When I announced on the blog that I had won, I asked if anyone wanted to go with me. The first one to respond was a guy named Mark.
Mark said he was a longtime DavidDust reader, although he had never commented or sent me an email before. We agreed to meet in front of Radio City before the “show”.
Mark and I found each other, went inside Radio City, and found our seats. Since we were up on the Second Mezzanine, this was our view…
But I didn’t mind one single bit, because this is who was sitting beside me…
Isn’t Mark adorable? Anywhoo, Anderson Cooper came out onstage and did a short introduction. I don’t know why people think Andy needs to announce that he’s gay – in the course of one minute he mentioned American Idol, his Mom (Gloria Vanderbilt), and Madonna. That’s like all the National Coming Out Days in history rolled up into a few sentences.
Anderson introduced the three panelists: Mike Huckabee, Arianna Huffington, and D.L. Hugley. The four of them sat down onstage and got to chatting…
D.L. Hugley, of course, was “the funny one”. He served as the voice of everyman – albeit an extremely comical and knowledgeable everyman. D.L. obviously got the most laughs – but he also made some excellent points, especially about fairness and equality.
Arianna Huffington, was “the smart one”. She is just so brilliant – something I tend to forget when I’m listening to her Zsa-Zsa-esque accent.
Mike Huckabee served as “the Republican one”. But he is no blowhard Rush Limbaugh. Huckabee manages to stick to the Republican talking points while still giving you that “aw shucks” shtick Americans love. In fact – he was able to get applause multiple times from a Manhattan audience – one of the most Democratic places in this country. This man will run for president again – trust me. Oh, and even on the second mezzanine I could tell that Mike Huckabee dyes his eyebrows. He was serving up some Joan Crawford realness to the children…
It pissed me off that Anderson didn’t drill Huckabee on some of the hard issues. For instance, Mike Huckabee thinks that instead of bailing out the “fat cats” and the banks, we should “give the money to the people it belongs to – the taxpayers”. A noble idea, to be sure. But he wants to do this by suspending payroll taxes for a period of time – thus putting more money directly in people’s pockets. If I would have been Anderson Cooper, I would have asked “What about the people who aren’t working?”. You have to be on a payroll to pay payroll taxes, dumbass! As usual, his Republican plan completely ignored the people who need the most help.
The interview/chat finished after about 1 ½ hours, and Mark and I decided to hit a local gay bar. On the way out, Mark took a picture of me…
Mark has read my blog for the past year – so he knew a lot about me. Of course that didn’t stop me from running my mouth at the bar. When he could finally get a word in edgewise, Mark proved to be smart, funny, and extremely sweet. Definitely “good people”. At about midnight, after a number of cocktails – we hit the streets and headed over to his subway stop. I took this pic in the middle of 9th Avenue…
Finally, it was time for the ubiquitous drunken MySpace photo. Although the first time I tried, I promptly turned the camera off as we posed. Dork!!!
Awwwwwww. Anywhoo, I know Mark is waiting to see these pictures on my blog – so here they are. Although I have no idea why – he is quite accomplished in his own right (
much more so than me).
It was a FUN night. :)
>P,b.
