Chris Matthews Says His Obama-Tingle Has Switched Legs

Original Link: http://blogs.sqlxml.org/tylerlikes/archive/2008/05/27/Chris-Matthews-Says-His-Obama_2D00_Tingle-Has-Switched-Legs.aspx

In early February, MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews famously confessed that Barack Obama's oratory made him feel a "thrill going up my leg". Sources close to Matthew later confirmed that the leg in question was his left. Now comes the revelation from Matthews himself, appearing yesterday on public radio's This American Life, that the "thrill" has somehow migrated to his right leg.

"I don't really know what happened, Ira," said Matthews during an interview with host Ira Glass, "but one day in April I was listening to Barack talk about hope and transcending all our old divisions -- or was it about all those foreigners stealing our jobs? -- when I suddenly became aware that the thrill, that little tingle, had jumped over to my right leg. I was flabbergasted, of course." Over the next few weeks, he said, his Obama-tingle was consistently located in his right leg, only travelling back into the left "during a couple of the debates with Hillary, for some reason. And whenever I flossed."

Experts agree that an Obama-tingle can be erratic. "There are those who find," says Dr. Heinz Baedecker of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, "that their personal Obama-tingle, while initially localized in some definite part of their anatomy -- their nose, say, or one of their kneecaps -- can often become unstable, or restless, and begin roaming freely throughout the body. This is nothing to be afraid of, let me add, and in fact can be a very pleasurable experience for some people. I myself am experiencing an Obama-tingle just now in my gallbladder, whereas this morning it was more in the neighborhood of the duodenum. Whoops, it just switched to both nipples. Not bad. Nonetheless, if not carefully monitored, a roving Obama-tingle can float upwards and lodge in the brain, where it could spark what's called an Obama-frenzy. Very unpleasant, that. Symptoms include messianic rhetoric, gas, and an extreme sensitivity to light."