Joe Biden wants to make one thing clear: he can’t dance.
Biden joked about his two left feet at multiple balls Tuesday night.
“The thing that frightens me the most (is) I’m going to have to stand in that circle and dance in a minute,” he said at the Commander in Chief Ball. At that, he laughed and did a quick sign of the cross.
At the Neighborhood Ball, he joked about killing time to avoid dancing.
“The last thing you need is to have a vice president sandwiched between a brand new president and all his star power up there. I learned a long time ago when to hush up. If you turn around and look at that screen, they’ve got me down to 22 seconds. The reason I want to keep talking is because I can’t dance,” he said.
But dance he did, stiffly, with wife Jill to “Have I Told You Lately.”
“I may not be able to dance, but I sure like holding her,” he said.
Lopez, Anthony duetTabloid speculation has focused on the status of Marc Anthony’s relationship with Jennifer Lopez, but there was no sign of trouble at the Western Ball Tuesday night.
For his last number, Anthony thrilled the crowd by inviting “my wife” to sing with him.
Lopez appeared on stage in a white draped gown with flashes of gold and one shoulder bare.
They kissed on the lips before launching into an upbeat love ballad in Spanish, occasionally gazing into each other’s eyes and caressing one another.
Earlier in the night he talked about her before singing a song for her.
“I wrote this next song about Jennifer. I must have been psychic,” Anthony said. He said he wrote the song, “You Sang to Me,” about 10 years ago.
“She didn’t get the point,” Anthony said, “but eventually it worked.”
At the end of the couple’s duet, they kissed again.
“Man, she’s cute,” Anthony said after Lopez walked offstage. He then bid the crowd goodnight.
Long wait in the coldAfter a morning of shivering in long lines, many Obama supporters braved an evening of more of the same.
At the Eastern States Ball, people were still waiting in line outside in the cold at 9:30 p.m. for the ball that started at 8 p.m.
“I think we have line fatigue from today,” said Joshua Shiffrin, 30, of Washington, D.C., who was at the front of the line and waited about a half-hour to get in. “We’re here now, so we’re happy.”
Justin Mendelsohn, 26, from New York City said, “We would not have been braving these lines for many candidates.”
And once inside, there was more standing, with few places to sit. At the Midwestern ball, groups of people gave up and sat on the floor.
“There’s no chairs. There’s nowhere to sit. And we’ve all got heels on,” Kate McCarthy, 37, said as she sat on the floor with her legs outstretched. But she wasn’t complaining. “People joined us. It’s actually quite fun.”
Bathrooms off limits for reporters
So where’s all this openness that Obama promised?
Certainly not at the Youth Inaugural Ball, where the media were welcome to cover the event — sort of.
Reporters were penned in the back of the room, prohibited from mingling among the guests, and could only approach people for interviews with an escort, a practice also followed at the Obama Home States ball.
What’s more, reporters were not even allowed to use the main bathrooms at the Washington Hilton; one media minder explained that organizers did not want reporters to interrogate the young-adult guests in the bathroom.
(The media could use a small bathroom near the back-hall entrance where they came into the event, again with an escort.)
Reality of war
Members of the military and their families who were being celebrated at the Heroes Red White & Blue Ball, with performances by country artist Keni Thomas and Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary.
Though the ball’s guests were plunging into the night’s celebration, the reality that the country remains at war hung over the festivities.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reminded the crowd that while attendees celebrated “dressed to the nines” there are more than 280,000 troops on duty “so we can enjoy this day.”
Cody Miranda, a Marine Corps veteran, beamed with excitement over the evening’s activities. He said he wrestled with post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism and landed several times in military prison after returning from Iraq.
“It’s great to be here to know I’m here after how I was in the military. I was downfallen,” he said, adding that he is now in school. He is expecting much from President Barack Obama.
“I want my friends out of Iraq,” Miranda said.
Second-rate status?
The Southern Ball was held at an armory on the outskirts of Washington, and some of the ballgoers thought they knew why: Nine of the 11 states represented went to John McCain.
Adding to the feeling of second-rate status, the Obamas made it one of their last scheduled stops of the night.
“This is one of the times I wish when I made my donation I had used one of my friends’ addresses,” said Donna Vaughn of Nashville, a Democratic and inaugural donor who works as a district manager for a biotech company.
“I kept thinking because we’re on the outskirts, we’ll be one of the first ones,” said one of Vaughn’s companions, Cassandra Branch, a pharmaceutical sales representative from Nashville.
Tennessee and fellow Southern Ball states Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas all went to McCain. Only North Carolina and Florida went to Obama.
There was nothing Southern in the decorations or food, though the music of entertainer Susan Tedeschi and her husband Derek Trucks’ band was sort of country-bluesy.
Still, despite some kvetching about the remote location near RFK stadium and the long wait for the Obamas, Vaughn and her group made the best of it. They beat out most of the estimated 10,000 ballgoers for some of the few seats in the place, prime spots in the balcony, and had cameras ready to capture the Obamas’ long-awaited appearance.