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OK, so maybe Michelle Obama didn’t actually break any barriers yesterday in Homestead as the first black woman ever to watch a NASCAR race. She may well have set a different, all-too-predictable record, though: most heartily booed MC at the season-ending race south of Miami.
Broadcast live on ESPN, Obama and Dr. Jill Biden were greeted with a chorus of boos loud enough to rise above the prerace jets, engine revs, and thunderous music. Does this mean President Obama won’t sweep the NASCAR demographic?
Obama and Biden were invited to the race to talk up their Joining Forces campaign, which helps returning military vets from Iraq and Afghanistan.
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To their credit, the Homestead crowd did remember to cheer for Army Sgt. Andrew Barry, a wounded Iraq vet. (Good thing he wasn’t a gay soldier, though!)
As you can hear around the 1:40 mark above, the crowd lets Obama and Biden have it before they join Barry in yelling, “Gentlemen, start your engines!”
The reception is already being played up around the blogosphere as proof positive of “America’s poisonous partisanship.” Even less shocking, the event led to a rash of “racist comments” at Fox Nation, the Examiner reports.
Sorry if we hold our gasps for all of this — inviting a sitting Dem’s wife to NASCAR is like bringing Pat Robertson to sing the National Anthem at the local LGBT conference (which we would pay money to see, actually).
By the by, some car racing went down in Homestead after the kerfluffle. Tony Stewart won the race to snag the championship trophy.
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