"How many of you have heard of the comedian Louis C.K?"
That's how former First Lady Rosalynn Carter began a rare appearance on the campaign trail Friday to stump for Democrat Hillary Clinton in Albany, where the 89-year-old showed off a rowdy sense of humor - and narrowly avoided uttering an expletive.
Our AJC colleague and resident Carter expert Jill Vejnoska got hold of a video of Mrs. Carter's performance, part of an all-out push by Democrats across the state to drive voters to the polls on Tuesday.
“A thing I like about Hillary is she’s a mother and a grandmother. She has one daughter and two grandbabies, and she’ll be concerned about children," she told a few dozen in the audience. "She’ll see to it that they have a good education and good health care.”
Then she brought up the comedian, glancing down at a piece of paper she had printed out.
“One of my grandsons sent me an article about him. He’s a comedian and he had a TV show. He uses some pretty bad words …," she said, over laughs from the crowd. “I’m going to tell you what he said on the Conan O’Brien show about mothers."
Then she quotes:
"'What is a mom?' Conan asked?
'A mom, she's got it,' CK said. 'A mother just does it. She feeds you, and teaches you, she protects you and takes care of . . ."
Carter paused and chuckled, “Well I can’t pronounce that word, I can’t say that word. But you know that word.”
In another clip, she makes a more familiar political argument, shifting to the importance of this election to the future of the Supreme Court:
“What worries me most is who will be making the Supreme Court decisions if the justices open up. If the wrong person wins, campaigns like ours’ will never happen again," she said, referring to Jimmy Carter's 1976 run. "You have to have millions of dollars even to become a candidate. And so, for years to come, money and millionaires will determine the outcome of our elections.”
