Tales From the Crypt

Feature: What I heard listening to Martin O’Malley in a dorm basement

'Most of what O’Malley has to say over the next hour and 40 minutes—about the importance of bringing people together, about how much he was inspired by working on Gary Hart’s campaign in ’84 and his time running for city council and the state senate—is very boring. But on the gossip front, he does not disappoint. More than once he talks about what the Democrats would do if they were “a functional party,” which, I gather, means that they are not one now.

“Do you believe that the DNC had its thumb on the scale and that the system was rigged against you as a candidate?” one of the moderators asks.

“I wouldn’t say the DNC,” O’Malley says, “but I would say the chair.” He goes on to say unequivocally that Debbie Wasserman Shultz fixed the debate schedule, adding that people in the party who questioned her were told they were “out of order.”

“On that day when they came out with the schedule and said that there were only going to be four debates and that most of them were going to be on Saturday or Sunday night hidden by NFL playoff games or the like—that’s when I knew our goose was cooked.”

O’Malley is equally brutal about Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the mayor of Baltimore who, I recall, did not endorse him. He tells us that when he was walking around the city during the unrest following the death of Freddie Gray, “A lot of people said, ‘Mayor, where’s the mayor?’” During the same period he suddenly remembered that for the first time in 15 years he had no security detail. “It’s like the movie Airplane: you picked a bad time to give up crack.” He jokes about getting accosted by “local street pharmacists” and a guy he thought was a mugger who turned out to be a big fan. He also talks about how, when he was mayor, the presidents of Johns Hopkins and Loyola begged him to revoke filming privileges for The Wire. . .

and leave when I hear one of the moderators say the word “guitar.” I run up to the front and sure enough, there it is: a starburst-colored Fender acoustic strapped across O’Malley’s torso. When he starts playing I don’t even mind that it’s not an original composition:

We should run in the forest
We should dance in the stream
We should sing, we should laugh
We should love, we should dream
We should stare at the stars
And not just at screens
Do you know what I’m saying?
Do you know what it means
To sing, sing at the top of your voice?

This is a truly magical thing.

When he’s finished I see that virtually everybody in the room is standing up. The cheers and applause continue for a long time. I can taste the enthusiasm, the optimism, the unity. At last, Martin O’Malley has brought us together.'

http://freebeacon.com/culture/tales-from-the-crypt/