A man who wore press credentials and took photographs from a platform interrupted Barack Obama’s town-hall meeting Tuesday by shouting complaints that the Democratic presidential candidate had not called for the audience to say the Pledge of Allegiance.
Obama invited the heckler to lead the audience in the pledge, and he did.
Attendees at the gathering in the gymnasium at Baldwin Wallace College in this Cleveland suburb rose to their feet and recited the pledge. “Thank you, sir, appreciate it,” Obama told the man.
Speaking with reporters afterward, he identified himself only as “John Q. Public” and declined to say which news organization, if any, he represented.
Asked why he had interrupted the event, the man said: “He (Obama) said it was a town-hall meeting.” He expressed dismay that Obama hadn’t called for the pledge himself, saying, “You all learned the pledge in the first grade.”
AP
8/5/8
