My 15 seconds of fame.

You’ve probably heard the expression, if you watch movies and those television shows such as Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood, when people talk about parts of their shows or lines being left on the cutting room floor.
Well, Monday, I thought I was going to be one of those people.
In case you haven’t heard or seen it, our town was featured for about four or five minutes Monday night on ABC’s World News Tonight with Charles Gibson.
A crew of four, a reporter, camera man and two techs came to our small town to get some reaction to comments (see page one for details) that Barack Obama, one of the two Democrats running for president made in San Francisco about small towns.
I heard the story over the weekend and have to admit my first reaction is “why did he down small towns,” but, I didn’t realize that the next day that the national news would come to our small town for a reaction.
Columbia, come on, we only make the local television stations when something bad happens. Forget the many events we have here in Columbia; forget the fact that our school board will honor a number of students of the month at its meeting tonight; forget the fact we were almost the capital of the United States.
That’s not newsworthy enough.
I also have to tell you that when I first received the phone call on Monday morning, I was like, sure, okay, whatever. I thought one of my many friends was pulling an April Fools Joke, three weeks late.
But then, I got an email from ABC in Washington, confirming the visit and their producer/reporter who was in Columbia.
Yes, we’ve made the big time and I was kind of excited.
I was excited that our town was going to be featured in the national spotlight, although I did expect it to be for about 30 seconds, and it was going to portray the town in a positive light for once.
So as the ABC crew made their way down Locust Street, people were taking notice.
I was kind of worried about how I would come off when I got interviewed. The ABC crew was extremely professional and made it easy. They didn’t ask the real tough questions like reporters are trained.
ABC News spent about four or five hours in our town.
Still, I thought my interview would end up on the cutting room floor and no one would believe me that I was going to appear on national television without it.
So when the piece aired, there I was sitting inside our office and getting my 15 seconds of fame.
In case your interested the cost of my autograph because of my appearance on national television is no longer free, but it’s still relatively inexpensive. Can you say priceless!
I wish we would have had more time to get the word out, but Columbia looked good in the eyes of a nation, I think.