© 2024
NPR for Northern Colorado
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Media Latch on to CU Freshman’s Yogurt Spill on President

A whirlwind media tour from an embarrassing mishap. Screencap of Kolbi Zerbest's appearence on the Today show, April 25th 2012.
NBC Universal
/
today.msnbc.msn.com
A whirlwind media tour from an embarrassing mishap. Screencap of Kolbi Zerbest's appearence on the Today show, April 25th 2012.

President Obama’s visit to the University of Colorado at Boulder yesterday brought serious discussion of student loans and debt, as reported by KUNC’s Kirk Siegler yesterday. To the dismay of hard core news fans, it also created a media moment dubbed “yogurt gate.

It happened when CU Freshman Kolbi Zerbest's yogurt accidentally landed on the trousers of President Barack Obama outside of the Boulder dive bar, The Sink.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j67YoLzdkbU#t=02m50s
Skip ahead to 2:50 for the yogurt 'incident'.

Zerbest’s embarrassing tale was instantly tweeted and picked up for all to see. The president later mentioned the incident during his talk in front of roughly 8,000 at CU Coors Event Center.

The story landed her media interviews with everyone from the Today show to local outlets like Boulder Camera and Fox31. As it turns out, she says photographers kicked her yogurt, which landed on the president.

One storyeven talks to Rush Bowls, the Boulder company that made Zerbest’s unfortunate dessert-like projectile. Turns out it was actually a concoction of fruit and granola—not yogurt. (Message to Obama: Acai will leave a fruit stain on your pants).

Why so much interest in a silly incident? Unscripted moments are becoming rarer on the campaign trail, and are especially hard to come by with a sitting U.S. president.

When the event happened President Obama immediately asked whose yogurt it was, and began interacting with Zerbest. He event wiped the yogurt off his pant leg.

“You’ve got a good story to tell,’’ Obama said to her. “You can say, ‘Well, I just spilled yogurt all over the president and the Secret Service.’’’

Related Content