A Sweet Effort to Get Young People to Vote

The overheated crowd streaming out of a John Edwards rally Monday night at the Palace Theatre in downtown Manchester, N.H. was met with 15-degree temperatures and everyone’s favorite winter treat -- ice cream?

Although an unlikely choice for below-freezing weather, three plucky Ben & Jerry’s employees nonetheless distributed free scoops of a new flavor, Primary Berry Graham.

“We’re getting a great response here,” said Jennifer Green, 32, a Ben & Jerry’s marketing specialist from South Burlington, Vt. “People seem really into it.”

“I’ll pretend it’s hot chocolate,” said Susan McKeown, 55, a pediatric nurse from Manchester, as she gobbled the graham crackered-laced strawberry cheesecake dessert . McKeown and her husband, Patrick, are Edwards supporters who have three campaign volunteers staying at their house.

The progressive ice cream company has joined with the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Rock the Vote to help raise political awareness among young people and encourage them to vote. Green and her co-workers stopped at universities, some campaign headquarters and a few select events to offer volunteers and New Hampshire voters free samples.

“We just want people to get involved,” Green said.

Green and her crew, who lugged 240 pints, or about 1,800 servings, to New Hampshire for the weekend, served about 250 cups in 25 minutes after the Edwards rally.

The Scream

Howard Dean’s Iowa concession speech -- variously described as a “crazy, red-faced rant,” “intensely animated,” a “maniacal outburst” and “a bizarre flight of irrational exuberance” -- has become lodged in the pop-culture firmament.

With a healthy lampooning on the late-night talk circuit, a spate of Internet remixes and a “Mean Dean” yelping action figure, Dean’s “I Have a Scream” moment lingers more than a week later. Editorial pages bicker whether the media reaction was overblown, and Dean enters the realm of Britney Spears’ blink-and-you- missed-it marriage -- almost.

Yahoo Internet searches for Dean have “skyrocketed,” according to the search engine in Sunnyvale, Calif. On Saturday, “Howard Dean scream” was sixth among Yahoo’s 10 leading searches, below “Jennifer Lopez” and above “Super Bowl” and “Atkins Diet.” Spears was No. 2.

Some of the most popular searches for Dean on Yahoo include “Howard Dean audio” and “Howard Dean meltdown.” Remixes of the yodel include a rip-off of Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” and a hip-hop track called “The Doctors Dean and Dre.”

These and other versions can be found at www.deangoesnuts.com, a site created by a Dean supporter.

Duly Quoted

* “A new poll by Newsweek magazine shows that if the election were held today, John Kerry would beat President Bush 49% to 46%. In fact, President Bush then called Newsweek magazine ‘A threat to world peace.’ ” -- Jay Leno on NBC’s “Tonight Show” Tuesday.

* “Undecideds for Clark”-- A homemade sign at a Clark rally Sunday in Henniker, N.H.

Compiled from staff, wire and website reports by Times staff researcher Susannah Rosenblatt.