"It was just before the president walked
in the room that I had to tell
Claudia, my two-year-old daughter, “No, you cannot take your clothes
off.” She wanted to wear a sheet, which is what she likes to do at home.
She started screaming. As he walked in we said: “Look, Claudia, it’s
Barack Obama" That’s when she threw herself on the floor," Laura Moser
writes on The Guardian
This was our seventh Passover seder at the White House. The tradition started on the campaign trail in 2008
when my husband Arun (who was then Obama’s videographer; he’s at the
back of the picture) and a few other staffers held an impromptu seder,
the traditional Passover meal, in a hotel in a small town in
Pennsylvania. Obama has hosted one at the White House for roughly the
same 20 people every year since. We read out the Emancipation
Proclamation, which is an Obama innovation. It is really powerful to
hear the first black president read aloud about freeing the slaves,
which is what Passover is all about, but in a different context.
Every year we bring a family member who joins us for mingling and
photographs, and then takes the children home before the seder begins.
Last year we took my father, who you can see standing just behind the
president. Claudia was on the floor for only a second; I didn’t actually
just let her lie there, as some internet commenters accused me of doing
after the photograph went viral. I am looking at my dad, saying, “All
right, time to go.” He had to drag her out and she screamed as they
walked down the corridor with the secret service escort.
We weren’t thrilled, but I wasn’t particularly anxious about it.
Everyone wants their children to be cute and smile for the president.
But Obama just makes everyone feel at ease – you don’t feel awestruck
because he is so human. Neither he nor the first lady cared that Claudia
was screaming. It was funny. You can see Obama turning to Pete Souza,
the official White House photographer, like, “Check this out.” The
beauty of kids is they don’t care who you are, which is why people like
the Obamas like them so much – they treat them like normal people.
A month or two later I was sent the photo and posted it on Facebook for
family and friends. I didn’t see the storm coming. My brother tweeted it
and tagged me. I was shopping and didn’t see my phone until I got back
and had 118 new notifications. It went from there. It was crazy to watch
it.
think Claudia will like the photograph when she is old enought to
understand it. We have it framed next to another picture of her with
Obama sniffing her hair, when she was four months old; he said, “She
still has that new baby smell.” Arun worked for Obama for four years,
and we have pictures of my son Leo with him at Halloween over the years.
Obama posed with Leo whose costumes included Franklin D Roosevelt, a
secret service agent and, when he was two, Thomas Jefferson. I used to
think it was a shame Claudia never got in those sorts of pictures, but
she’s surpassed him in one shot.
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