Before He Was President, Mistaken for a Waiter: a 2003 Obama Meeting

Katherine Rosman reports on her encounter with President-elect Barack Obama . On a warm weekday evening in 2003, a group that can fairly be described as representative of the media elite gathered at one if its favored venues: the garden behind the Manhattan apartment of journalists Tina Brown and Harold Evans . The occasion was the publication of “The Clinton Wars,” by Sidney Blumenthal , a former aide to President Bill Clinton . Editors from the New Yorker and the New York Times were in attendance along with media figures like Steven Brill and Rolling Stone co-founder Jann Wenner . The guests mingled and sipped wine. Even Clinton showed up, instantly becoming the epicenter of attention. I had not been invited but attended the event as the “plus one” of political columnist Eric Alterman , who wrote about the party in The Guardian on Thursday. At the time, I was a freelance journalist not yet employed by The Wall Street Journal. Eager for an ... (link)