Play of the day: Obama plays Taboo
Posted: Friday, May 09, 2008 2:01 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones
SOMEWHERE-IN-THE-SKY-OVER-AMERICA -- Life on the campaign trail is often grueling. The 20-hour days, the ubiquitous turkey sandwiches, the constant travel, the never knowing where you're going to be the next night -- not to mention hearing the same speech over and over and over again. Exhausted reporters complain, exhausted staffers get snappy and sometimes even a 757 can start to feel too small.
So after a particularly punishing stretch of campaigning, with a five-hour flight to Oregon to look forward to, the traveling press settled down for a few rounds of Taboo yesterday. For those that don’t know, it’s a game by Hasbro that is perhaps best described as verbal charades. Players pull a card showing a key word, phrase or famous person's name that they must get their team to guess. The card includes a list of words that can't be used in trying to elicit an answer. Take the word "Aggravate," in this case, the forbidden words would be "Annoy," "Pester," "Antagonize," "Irk," and "Harass". You get a point for every word you get and your team loses a point if you say one of the taboo words. The other team uses a buzzer to indicate when you've done so, and there's a plastic hourglass as a timer.
Reporters have taken to playing the game during long trips and this time the Obama staffers -- including the senator himself -- joined in for two rounds.
The sometimes-heated match led to quite a few funny exchanges, especially since the secret trick to the game is using common points of reference and shared experiences, of which there are many on the trail. Often reporters use lines from stump speeches, recent events and the names of candidates, their spouses or other political figures to get others to say the right answer.
At one point the key phrase was "White House" and the reporter giving the clue said, "Barack wants to live there." The team shouted the correct answer and Obama laughed.
During another turn, the key word was "California" and a reporter said, "This is where Sen. Obama said his "bitter" comments." The other reporters shouted San Francisco, then the Bay Area and a few other words before eventually guessing correctly, at which point Obama joked that he had come to the back of the plane get away from such issues, not to be reminded of them.
Early on, the senator managed to get his team to guess "Cockatoo" by talking about an animal that flies, can mimic human words and has fancy plumage.
Later, when Obama's word was "Revolution," his clue was that this was something Thomas Jefferson called for from time to time. As if sensing a collective "huh?" from his team, he quickly concluded the clue was "too obscure" and instead said the Beatles sang a song about it, which elicited the correct guess.
It was the first time the often media-weary Obama has played a game on the plane with the traveling press and was, therefore, a noteworthy moment, especially since in recent months, Hillary Clinton has taken to chatting with reporters more and more on her plane, both on and off the record, and John McCain is known for his willingness to engage the press.
The game was not without frustration and even a few four-letter words at times of unforced errors, and there was an odd moment at one point when a staffer attempting to get teammates to say the word "gap" gave a clue to the effect that "gay people shop there." The team guessed a series of stores: Obama said, Abercrombie & Fitch; another person said H&M and eventually someone said The Gap.
The competition was feisty, but light-hearted, with lots of buzzing, some trash talking and lots of laughs. In a stunning turn of events, staffers won both rounds, but reporters vowed to have a rematch.
