"Don't get too excited, Meade. It will be this kind of kiss."

I wrote in September 2008 (before I'd met Meade in person) in the comments to a post based on the NYT headline "Obama to Dispatch Female Surrogates," which I'd said "put a picture in my head of Obama releasing an army of programmed fembots." That was some crazy "war on women" the last time around.

I love running across old byplay between me and Meade. And I also love running across these old political things that bear some relationship to what's happening today. But the women stuff was much more fascinating back then, when Obama had crushed women's dreams of the first woman President and McCain had released The Palin.

The new headline, "Obama Camp Turns to Clinton to Counter Palin," flips the image. It's not Obama, but the Obama camp -- a large, faceless group -- and now it's not a large, faceless group of women, but one particular woman, Hillary. Don't pin anything directly on Obama, and don't disrespect women by portraying them as nonindividuals.

Can you guess what got me to that old post? I'd searched my blog for the word "faceless" — trying to get to this blog post I'd written a week or so ago about the 3 times Obama called people "faceless" in "Dreams From My Father." That post followed on an inquiry into the story (from Obama's book) about how, as a boy, he'd shouted at and shoved a little girl.

There were faces then — big faces. Hillary. Sarah.

I Am Big, It's the Pictures That Got Small
Sunset Blvd. at MOVIECLIPS.com

They used to be big. It's the politics that got small.