Dallas Observer
In 2000,
Todd Spivak covered
Barack Obama's district for two community newspapers. "I was 25 and had no problem interviewing big-wig politicians, but I always had to steel my nerves when calling Obama," he writes. "His intelligence was intimidating, and my hands inevitably shook and sweated." The politician wasn't all that different from the image he projects now, but "one thing I can say is, I never heard him launch into the preacher-man voice he now employs during speeches. He sounded vanilla, and activists in his mostly black district often chided him for it."
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Clear signs suggest Obama's press treatment will soon change (MM)
