Recalling Obama's big night at Denver's Mile High Stadium in the summer of 2008

As I watched President Obama's speech Wednesday night, I thought back to that late-August night in 2008 when he made his acceptance speech at the DNCC in Denver's Mile High Stadium. 

I was part of a capacity crowd that celebrated Obama's first major step along the way to the presidency. I was the embedded blogger with the Wyoming delegation, We sat at the 30-yard-line on Invesco Field, a field where the Denver Broncos would host their home opener in just a few weeks. On Sept. 14, the Broncos beat the San Diego Chargers 39-38 with a two-point conversion at 29 seconds left. Quarterback Jay Cutler had what might have been his best game as a Bronco. After an 8-8 season, the Broncos fired the old coach, hired a new coach and traded Cutler to Chicago. The team was not in the playoffs on the week of Jan. 20 when Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president. In the ensuing 11 years, the Broncos would get a new quarterback, lose one Super Bowl and win another. Obama won reelection in 2012 and experienced much drama in his eight years courtesy of the Know Nothing Republicans and Fox News.

But that Aug. 28 night at Mile High was glorious. More than 75,000 packed the stadium. That may be more than attended Trump's inauguration but that number could vary on whether you're listening to Trump's fever dreams or to reality.

I have never returned to that field of play, now named after Empower Retirement which was called Sports Authority Field before that. Naming rights are tricky things. Companies come and go, fortunes rise and fall. Empower was created with a merger between Great West Life and another insurance company. Great West insured my family during my career with the State of Wyoming. Great West was OK but battled us on payments related to drug and alcohol treatment and mental health care. Its replacement, Cigna, is much more accommodating. In the U.S. version of free-market capitalism, you never know upon what field you stand. The groomed turf can be pulled out from under you at any time. There's a metaphor in there somewhere. 

That Aug. 28 night 12 years ago is forever embedded in Mile High Stadium. The team brags about the fact that it's the only NFL football stadiums in which a presidential candidate made his acceptance speech and later went to to two terms as president. 

This year, the Dems' presidential candidate made his acceptance speech in an empty convention room. The Year of Coronavirus. The Broncos will play in an empty stadium. That will be eerie. Mile High has a reputation as one of the loudest and rowdiest in the NFL. Not sure if the Broncos will follow baseball with cardboard cutout fans and, in some cases, projections of fans filmed in earlier seasons. The team has quite an imagination so why not?

During the next sixty-some days in 2008, I worked hard to get Obama elected. I walked neighborhoods and called registered voters in Wyoming, Colorado, and Pennsylvania, I worked for Dems jockeying for Wyoming House and Senate candidates. I watched a lot of football too. Obama won, of course, over the late John McCain. Obama fielded a well-oiled machine that delivered votes from some unexpected places (not Wyoming, alas). Obama repeated in 2012 over Mitt Romney. A presidential two-peat is like back-to-back Super Bowl wins. The Broncos did that under John Elway who we don't talk about much because he is such a Trump ass-kisser. Looking back, McCain and Romney were moderates. Republicans grew sick of losing with qualified moderates so turned to a billionaire and white supremacist and reality show host, Donald Trump. They were helped by decades of GOP voter suppression and gerrymandering. And voter apathy, can't forget that. 

So, the democrats held their pep rally this past week and are fired up and ready to go. The GOP Hatefest will light up the airwaves next week. We can look forward to rousing speeches by The My Pillow Guy and Scott Baio. It will finish off with a stemwinder by Donald Trump which will be filled with the cruelty and hatred he has specialized in during the past four years.

Damn. You'd think that the more qualified and more talented team -- the Democrats -- could breeze over the crooks and liars of The Trump Team. A lopsided win, like the Team Formerly Known as the R*dskins over the Broncos in Super Bowl XXII or the Seattle Seahawks over the bumbling Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII. You'd think that unless you didn't know history and the vagaries of human nature. Demagogues have subverted democracies before. If Trump wins, we can forget about our democratic republic. It will be nostalgia, just like the rousing cheers for Obama in Mile High Stadium in the summer of 2008. 

Here are some tips to avoid those typo gremlins

Nobody in the Trump administration asked me for help, but I am offering it anyway.

First of all, a bit of history about typographical errors. They have been with us since the advent of the printing press. And spelling errors, well, they have been with us since humankind began sketching out a language on mud tablets or papyrus or cave walls, whatever was handy.

Humans are fallible. When  you combine that with high visibility, it's an invitation for trouble. I know this from almost 40 years as a writer and editor.

#45's first poster featured either a spelling error or a typo. SCSOE Betsy DeVos's office misspelled African-American activist's W.E.B. Dubois's name on a press release for Black History Month and compounded the problem by apologizing with the wrong form of apology.

We know that these people have the advantage of higher education. In other words, they're not uneducated. Gross negligence is another problem. Impulsivity, maybe, as we know that POTUS is impulsive on Twitter at 5 a.m.

I offer some tips on avoiding these little gremlins in your written documents, whether they appear only on social media or on thousands of posters, one of which will end up in the National Archives. The term "gremlins" is a good description for these little devils. It comes from British pilots in the 1920s, who needed something (rather than somone) to blame for the failings of their rickety aircraft. It really caught on during WWII, when pilots in the Battle of Britain referred to gremlins as the thing that gummed up the throttle, caused fuel leaks and generally ran amok over the whole works. Gremlins persist, which may be the cause of constant dysfunction at the Trump White House.

 One more thing. Do not treat Spell Check as the last word on your document. Apology, apologies and apologize(s) are all correct. Too and to are both words. Their use depends on context. Can you say context?

Some recent examples:

1. Michael Flynn, former National Security Advisor, wasn't too careful when he talked to two (or maybe two-and-twenty) Russian sources about U.S. national secrets.

You can see how to, too and two are used. Two-and-twenty is antiquated, best relegated to nursery rhyme and blogs. Besides, it could have been two million for all we will ever know.

2. Betsy DeVos offered no apology for giving money to all of the Republicans who voted for her nomination as Secretary of Education. She does apologize that it wasn't more, but that will be taken care of shortly.

Apology is a noun and is used here correctly. Apologize is a verb and it is also used correctly here. One of these days, all of these hacks will apologize to the American people but we won't hold our breath.

3. White House spokesman Stephen Miller msaid out loud that we shouldn't dare question POTUS's decision, whether it by on national security or Ivanka's clothing line. We can only conclude that he speaks with great precision, but obviously is batshit crazy.

That's all for today, language nerds. Your humble narrator signs off until I am needed again, which will be soon.