What can you really tell about someone by a picture or a video?
Can you determine what kind of person they are? Their values, beliefs, and goals? What about a photo of a presidential hopeful on the campaign trail? What kind of crowd would he assemble around the podium to send the message that he's the "other" guy—the progressive, antiestablishment choice? Wouldn't the proximity of two white moms and their six black kids help make his case?
You may remember a particularly iconic moment from a March 2016 rally for then presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders. It happened in Portland, Oregon, where Sanders was midspeech when he a tiny bird landed directly in front of him, inches away from his notes. "I think there may be some symbolism here," Sanders ad-libs, "I know it doesn't look like it, but that bird is really a dove asking us for world peace."
There were more than 11,000 attendees at that particular rally, and the Hart family were among them. They were standing directly behind Sanders, jumping up and down in matching blue Bernie T-shirts. And this wasn't the first time the Harts had publicly supported the senator; days earlier, the family had attended his rally in Vancouver, Washington. Afterward, Jen posted about it on Facebook, saying she'd made the kids stand for four hours in the pouring rain. According to a family friend of the Harts, a member of the Sanders campaign team approached the Harts that day and invited them to come to the Oregon rally.
That's where they became part of the bird moment. The video has over 2.3 million YouTube views—and counting.
Jen claimed that the family had been approached about doing a reality TV show, but that "no amount of money would ever be worth the trials and tribulations that would surely come from media/producers manipulating our lives on a TV show." Fair enough. But how could one family—especially one interested in living off the grid—become virally famous by accident?
