Barack Obama on “Check, Please!” in August 2001.
Future leader of the free world:
“I’m not looking for some fancy presentation or, you know, extraordinarily subtle flavors. I mean, what I’m looking for is food that tastes good for a good price.”
That’s having your finger on the pulse of America.
Check, Please! is the hit show for grown-ups on WTTW Channel 11, the main PBS affiliate in Chicago. A couple of Chicagoans are guests each week, they each pick their favorite restaurant in the city, and then the host and guests eat at each place together and talk about it afterwards.
I worked as an intern on the WTTW nightly news show, Chicago Tonight, in the summer of 2008. Most of my time there had much more to do with how nutty Rod Blagojevich was, but everybody who worked there full-time had some kind of experience with Obama, mostly from when he was a young state senator, or from the crazy 2004 U.S. Senate race (most Senate races don’t involve the unsealed divorce papers of the lady who played Seven Of Nine on Star Trek Voyager, or Bears great Mike Ditka coming thisclose to becoming an 11th hour replacement candidate).
A couple months later Barack Obama was elected President, and WTTW re-ran this episode of Check, Please!, without any kind of commentary, just as a little retrospective on how far he had come in seven short years.
No point to this, I guess, except that in a republic you’ll run across future Presidents in some funny places if you pay attention.
