Daniel Rubin: Obama exit music was strange - yet fitting

Daniel Rubin was on assignment last week, live blogging about the Democratic National Convention. Here are excerpts from his blog, "Blinq."

I think it was Norman Mailer who wrote that you shouldn't invade a country without understanding its music.

Brooks and Dunn? When they started playing that syrupy country song "Only in America" after Barack Obama finished his acceptance speech, I thought: What a strange piece of stagecraft.

I woke up wondering if it was really Obama's choice. Does he really dance to this? I mean, there were so many anthemic pieces he or his people could have chosen as exit music - "A Change Is Gonna Come," by Sam Cooke, or that other SC, Sheryl Crow, who a few hours earlier had sung "A Change Would Do You Good."

Brooks and Dunn?

Then, on Cowboy Lyrics, I found the words:

Sun coming up

over New York

City

School bus driver

in a traffic jam

Staring at the

faces in her

rearview mirror

Looking at the

promise of the

Promised Land

One kid dreams of

fame and

fortune

One kid helps pay the rent

One could end up going to prison

One just might be president

I guess he does understand our music.

Wednesday, 8:52 p.m.

After a series of polished but polite political speeches, rowhouse Philadelphia just caught my ear on C-Span.

It was Rep. Patrick J. Murphy (D., Pa.), the boyish Iraq war vet, flanked by 25 fellow vets.

And he delivered a body blow to George W. Bush. "For eight long years we've had a president who rushed to stand in front of soldiers at political rallies, but abandoned them at Walter Reed," he said.

He touted Obama as a senator who's led the charge for vets who are homeless and who suffer from mental disabilities. He said America needs a smarter and tougher foreign policy, one that will take the fight to Afghanistan, where terrorists grow stronger.

Nothing polite about this Philly-style piece of mind.

Wednesday, 2:18 p.m.

Someone's got to invent a drinking game where you have to down a Stegmaier any time that hardscrabble Pennsylvania city to the north gets mentioned on the floor. (Or when someone uses the word

hardscrabble

.) Hillary, Bob Casey and Biden all are rooted in Scranton, which we've heard 1,000 times.

Speaking on the Journal Editorial Report last weekend, Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul Gigot seemed to have heard enough of the city, which has become code for the working-class white voters - read

Reagan Democrats

- everyone wants to reach.

"If they mention Scranton, Pa., one more time," he began, but never finished his threat.

Let's leave it to native son Mark Jurkowitz to put this matter to rest. Writing in Real Clear Politics, he explained the political charms of this new Peoria:

For all the city's attempts to "get back up," as Clinton would say, no one could have envisioned its emergence as a full-blown icon in this campaign.

In an election in which economic hardship and working class anxiety are crucial issues, Scranton has somehow become a symbol of both the ills and resilience of our society as a whole. And for the candidates, a Scranton background is a badge of honor, a way of saying, "I am one of you."

One of us, one of us. Why am I thinking of the movie

Freaks

?

Monday, 10:42 a.m.

I was wondering why we merchandise people's personal horrors on the public stage - Teddy Kennedy's son and the cancer, Al Gore's son and the car accident, John Edwards and his son's fatal crash. An answer came last Saturday from Obama. He told the audience in Springfield, Ill.:

Tragedy tests us. It tests our fortitude and it tests our faith.

It also makes these camera-ready people real.