Tuesday, November 4, 2008

Obama signs Baracktoberfest T for Tom Schlafly


I spoke with Tom Schlafly, co-owner of Schlafly Beer, yesterday. He returned a call to me from New York, after a month in China. A message from me was in his mass of voice messages when he got back in the country. I had called to tell him to pick up a copy of The St. Louis American from the week of October 30, because it had a nice feature about Gabe Gore.

Gabe is a local lawyer who serves with Tom on the St. Louis Public Library board. Tom had told me about Gabe early in the Obama campaign, because both Gabe and his wife Nicole Gore had studied under Professor Barack Obama at the University of Chicago Law School in the early 1990s. Gabe even has the unique distinction of having played many hours of one-on-one hoops with the man who would become one of the most transformative politicians in American history.

Since Tom had told me about Gabe and his special relationship to Obama, I had been hoarding the story as The St. Louis American's October surprise - a deeply intimate local feature that would help to seal our coverage of this historic campaign. I sort of prayed that no reporter or editor from another publication would discover Gabe and ruin our October surprise, and it seems my prayers were answered, along with many other more important prayers concerning Barack Obama and his campaign.

When he called, I told Tom his business partner, Dan Kopman, was holding a copy of the paper for him. Tom thanked me and said he had already heard from Gabe, thanking him for the introduction to me, and from other members of the library board, who were excited to see one of their own featured in our paper in such an interesting capacity.

Then Tom shared with me his own October surprise. He said he had heard from Claire McCaskill (U.S. senator from Missouri). Claire had presented Obama with a Schlafly Baracktoberfest T-shirt and Obama had signed it for him. I expect we'll be seeing this garment hanging on a wall at The Tap Room soon.

Then I asked Tom if he was voting absentee. He said he had already done so. I think it's rude to ask a friend how he is voting, but something tells me Obama moved one vote closer to victory in Missouri when Tom Schlafly cast his vote.

2 comments:

dawnM said...

Can you still get one of these shirts?

Poetry Scores said...

The post links to an order page

http://www.schlafly.com/HTML/estore.vote2008tee.php

that says they are sold out.

Not sure if that's a final answer.