Field has a better memory about such things. With Obama's second inauguration landing on the day we honor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, I wanted to hear what my blogger friend thought about the job done by the man he calls "His O ness."
But first, Field wanted to clear a few things off his chest.
"I have to say I'm pretty annoyed by false conservative narratives," he began. "The war on Christmas, the Black Panthers who keep white people from voting, Obama as socialist."
He's galled by the latest dig, when Obama brought Newtown, Conn., students to the stage where he announced his gun-violence plan. One GOP congressman said that was a ploy favored by Saddam Hussein.
Field is hardest on his own, however, whether it's the black mayors who let down Trenton or Detroit, or the people at Oxygen who green-lighted a TV special on the rapper Shawty Lo and the 10 mothers of his 11 children.
The network last week pulled All My Babies' Mamas. Field had been one of the loudest protesters. He mourned the "Springerfication" of America.
"It is disgusting," said the dapper man who by day goes by Wayne Bennett, a special master in Philadelphia Family Court. "What I do [for a living] is make fathers accountable for the children they bring into this world."
As for Obama's record, Field isn't that impressed. Black unemployment is double that of whites. Murder rates are shameful in Philadelphia and Chicago, Obama's hometown. But the killings go on out of most people's sight. So, out of mind.
"Twenty kids lose their lives in Newtown - a horrible tragic event - and he cries. Why won't he cry for these kids in Chicago? That shooter had mental problems. But so do 90 percent of the kids who wind up shooting each other on the corner for money, drugs, or revenge. They're just not diagnosed."
Credit Obama for getting health-care reform going. And he made good on his promise to get out of Iraq. But he's fallen down on immigration, Field says, and closing the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay. Where's the focus on educating the poor?
"Overall, he has been a good president. He's not going to go down as a Lincoln, an FDR, or even a Bill Clinton. He'll be somewhere in the middle of the pack."
Field is not too jazzed by those Obama surrounds himself with. "Too Ivy League," says the LSU-educated lawyer, who grew up privileged as the son of a Jamaican government official. "I don't see him as a guy who prizes real-world experience in choosing the people around him. He does it by letters, degrees."
Still, Field has hopes for the second term. He likes the more combative man who appeared at the news conference on the debt ceiling. "I think you'll see more of this term. This is the most natural Obama, a little angrier. I don't know if he'll get as much done - the Republicans make it hard - but I think I'll like this Obama more."
Contact Daniel Rubin at 215-854-5917, drubin@phillynews.com, or follow on Twitter @danielrubin or on Facebook at http://ph.ly/DanRubin.
