In the latest Katie Couric “sound bite and a half” dueling interviews (both candidate gets the same question and can actually use more than 25 words to answer it), she asked “Which three people, currently alive – other than myself – would you like to have dinner with?”
Obama’s answer:
Nelson Mandela
Warren Buffett (“he’s like your favorite uncle, only worth 40 million and really smart”)
His grandmother, who he’s only seen once in the last 19 months (too fragile to travel)
McCain’s answer:
David Petreus
Meg Whitman of eBay
An athlete. Any athlete. Maybe Michael Phelps. Or that gold-medal wrestler, whose name he’s not entirely sure of – Henry Suhado? Or the 400-meter relay team, to tell them we still love them.
Who are your three?
My list starts with Jon Stewart – I’m really not sure who my other two are. Gimme some ideas.
Valerie Martin, author of A Recent Martyr, because she’s so freaking brilliant.
Kristin Bell, because she is on both my wife’s and my own list of people we’re allowed to have sex with without it being cheating, and because Kim claims to have a plan that would make that happen. (I’m assuming Kim’s along, of course.
I think dinner with Stephen Colbert*, Barack Obama and John McCain all together would be an interesting night. Especially somewhere private where they could feel free to be nice to each other, or throw a punch, whichever they felt was appropriate.
*Colbert would be interesting, methinks, in his own right, but at this dinner he’d be the straw that stirs the drink, so to speak.
I hate these kinds of questions. It would take me weeks of thinking about it to decide on the three living people I most want to have dinner with, and that’s without even factoring in second-guessing myself so people don’t have some insight into my character that I don’t want them to have.
So let’s just say Bratt Pitt, Hugh Jackman, and Jeremy Northam, and we’ll see where the evening takes us.
My partner (we’re maintaining two places while moving and I haven’t seen him in 10 days).
My friend Jessica. (It’s been a while. I’ll probably lunch with her Friday).
My sister. (She’s in England. I haven’t seen her for months.)
**I diagnose myself as having mild social anxiety disorder. I would find it stressful to actually meet the people on my wishful list—unless I could be a fly on the wall or something. But then again I’m not too keen on being swatted. I better stick with my real list.