8/24/08

Text marks the spat for Obama fans

3 a.m. news a very rude awakening

Aug. 24, 2008

By Ginger Adams Otis and Marcie Young
New York Post

OMG . . . It's 3 a.m. R U awake?

Maceo Brown wasn't.

The 25-year-old from Harlem was jolted out of a deep sleep in the wee hours yesterday by a text message from Barack Obama telling him that Joe Biden was his vice-presidential pick.

"It was the first time I've been upset with Obama in a long time, because he woke me up," Brown said yesterday.

"I got up and spent a lot of time on the computer - and I could have spent that time sleeping!" Brown joked.

He added that he's an avid Obama supporter and had been hoping to hear the news before it reached the mainstream media.

Jennifer Miles, 47, was also roused by Obama's late-night message, but she wanted the heads-up.

"I had the phone under my pillow waiting for the text," the interior designer from Harlem said.
"It's not usually there," she said.

The Obama camp isn't talking about when it decided to roll out its text and e-mail messages - but it failed in its goal to reach supporters before it hit the mainstream media.

"My feeling is that they had to speed things up by a few hours once it started to leak around midnight that it was Biden," said a source close to the Obama camp. "They were ready to go, but probably would have preferred to do it a little later."

Benjamin Cook was awake in Illinois when his text came in around 2:45 a.m.

At the time, he was waiting for a friend to keep him posted.

"My first reaction when I read the text was, what in the world is [Obama] doing sending out a text in the middle of the night?"

He assumed Obama was having fun with Hillary Rodham Clinton's infamous "red phone" ad that asked voters who should be in the White House for a 3 a.m. emergency.

"It seems like sort of a slam to Clinton. I don't know what that's going to do for party unity, but it's pretty funny," Cook said.

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