Especially, I hate conventions since they became infomercials for the party or the politicians giving the speeches. Not sure when that happened exactly but it must have been around the time Reagan was President. Everything about his campaign was so stage managed and the conventions just became another piece of that.
Plus now you have the endless media babble about incredibly stupid stuff, horse race stuff, and of course, the inevitable commentariat pundits who are heavily Republican loaded or leaning over backward “liberals” trying to be fair and balanced which means they end up being neither. I could care less what Karl Rove or Pat Buchanan or Joe Scarborough or whomever the house GOP political consultants at CNN think about anything related to the Democratic party Everything is pitched by the cable shows as a controversy or a near controversy or some other bullshit. It’s completely worthless. And even the C-Span coverage bores the hell out of me.
So the only thing I will be watching is Obama’s speech on Thursday night. That seems to me to be the only thing that will rise above the level of ambient noise the media and the party will be putting out for our consumption. But hey, for all you junkies who are really into the details of all this stuff, Geov is on scene and will be filing his reports so thank god it’s him and not me, even though I’m from Denver originally and would have loved a return trip just to see my family.
However, considering the plans of the Denver Police, I’m not sure I wanted to risk getting arrested for standing on the wrong sidewalk or stumbling into the wrong protest group at the wrong time. And getting tasered scares the piss out of me. My family has a history of heart arrhythmia and other heart related problems (father and mother both suffer from it and both grandfathers had heart attacks) so the possibility, no matter how slim of feeling a jolt (or 3 or 4 or …?) of 50,000 volts coursing through my unhealthy body doesn’t seem worth the risk of getting to see famous and not so famous Dems from a great distance, if at all. Better views on TV for the speeches Thurday, anyway.
Besides, I’ve already been inside Invesco Field, and it’s just like every other stadium built on the taxpayer’s dime for the benefit of rich guys who own football teams over the past 2 decades — great if you are going to be sitting in one of the boxes or in the better, club seats on the lower levels, but not so great if you get stuck up in the upper levels where they usually put the hoi polloi like yours truly.
So enjoy the convention reporting and speeches and stuff if that’s your bag. Me? I’ll be keeping an eye out for things going on outside the confines of what our major media deem worthy of notice. It may not attract as many commenters here but to me it’s the really important stuff. Like this story for example:
BAGHDAD (Reuters) – U.S. forces freed a cameraman for the Associated Press in Baghdad on Saturday after holding him for three months without charge, the news agency said.
Ahmed Nouri Raziak, 38, was handed over to representatives of the Associated Press at a U.S. military compound in Baghdad. He had been detained by U.S. and Iraqi forces at his home in the northern city of Tikrit on June 4, the agency said in a report from Baghdad.
Raziak’s release comes two days after the military freed an Iraqi cameraman for Reuters, Ali al-Mashhadani, who was held for three weeks without charge after being arrested while renewing his credentials at a U.S. military press office.
Gee, who’d a thunk a Republican administration would order the military to censor the press in Iraq during an election year by illegally detaining reporters in order to intimidate coverage of what’s really happening over there? Not that anyone over here among our media overlords cares about the truth in Iraq anyway.
In covering the story of Iran’s role in Iraq, far too many reporters have passed on blatant propaganda without the slightest effort to point out its inconsistency with documented facts, much less to try to uncover the truth. But a story by Pamela Hess of Associated Press distributed Aug. 15 sets a new standard for abetting official disinformation.
In the story, she acts as an enthusiastic megaphone for a patently phony story from an anonymous “senior intelligence officer.”
Hess’ hit-squad training story should be assigned to journalism classes for the next generation to open a discussion about what went wrong with American journalism before and during America’s overtly imperial war in the Middle East. And Hess should be seen as a stunningly clear illustration of what happens when a reporter gives up any pretense of independence from the national-security state.
Hess’ lede announces what appears to be a significant development in the otherwise waning U.S.-Iran conflict over Iraq. “Iraqi Shi’ite assassination teams are being trained in at least four locations in Iran by Tehran’s elite Quds force and Lebanese Hezbollah,” she writes, “and are planning to return to Iraq in the next few months to kill specific Iraqi officials as well as U.S. and Iraqi troops, according to intelligence gleaned from captured militia fighters and other sources in Iraq.”
But a careful reader quickly learns from perusing the next several paragraphs that this official assertion is actually based on nothing more than speculation. It is just another propaganda blast in the guise of an intelligence briefing.
They only care about the perception the Bush/McCain team is pushing that it’s all good, we’re winning a great victory (which is why we need to stay there as long as possible) and Obama is a crazy traitorous “Defeatocrat” for daring to suggest we pull out and direct our military resources to Afghanistan. In other words our media world is situation normal – all fricking screwed up.
Which brings me back to my the reason for writing this post in the first place: my explanation for why I won’t be attending the convention in Denver or watching the convention coverage on TV until the Obama speech. Because, to paraphrase Shakespeare, it all will be full of sound and fury, ultimately signifying nothing. Count on it.
The guy’s name is Blow?
Sort of says it all in a nutshell, eh?
They are negotiating with Maliki for a timetable until 2011? Thats a bit to far in the future for my tastes. The occupation needs to end in 2009 soon after the Dems take power. This is the Democrats last chance as many on the left are beyond frustration with the status quo.
I’m with you on the conventions although I felt that way last time and missed the Obama coming out party. Hopefully the Repuglicans will feel the wrath of the antiwar protesters in Michigan too.
I guess they were a lot more interesting back in the day when there were routinely brokered conventions. That era ended in 1952 and 1948 for the two parties.
The parties prefer a coronation for obvious reasons though. And that makes for boring TV. Part of me wants to say that they aren’t even needed any more, but they do help to get the party activists all fired up and motivated, so I suppose they still have some value.
Why don’t they have them every year? Everybody
else does (business, interest groups, parties in
other countries). These national conventions
are moribund because they have become pageants
but a real yearly convention system might actually
do useful work: debate issues, provide feedback,
give local leaders a try-out on a national stage.
The root of the word “conventional”.
Yup.
Yawn.
AG
c’mon, Steve. You gotta watch Michelle’s speech. How about Biden’s? The Clintons’?
There’s at least a hint of drama this time around.
You’ll do a better job writing about those and I can then read you. It’s called time management. 😉
I’m with you regarding time management.
So. While I will miss Michelle Obama’s speech tomorrow night, I will watch it first thing when I get home. But I have non-electoral political reasons for watching. My friends, family and I identify so strongly with her, and for once, we are seeing a real African-American woman on quite the national political stage. Not a stereotype (Lord, how they try though) or some mousy creature afraid of her own shadow, but a real person. You have no idea how flippin’ huge that is for me at a gut level. It’s the “heart” stuff and I will take a moment to indulge it.
I’ll also record President Carter. As much hell as he caught (and still catches in some quarters) for being considered among the “worst” presidents, he is perhaps guilty of being ahead of his time. We can either deal with things while they are manageable or things will deal with us. I dare say that this has “sunk in” fully, but I believe it is starting to do so.
I’ll watch Mark Warner and Tim Kaine because I’m from Virginia. If Donna Edwards is recorded even reading the newspaper, I’ll watch.
Of course, I’ll watch Biden and I’ll watch Obama.
The Clintons? Not so much. My birthday is Tuesday. It’s bad enough that I have to go to work that day at all (I try my best not to do so, as I celebrate every birthday, but I have too much work to do). I will not ruin it completely by obsessing over what she does or does not say.
With you 100%, Steven.
I can remember a little of the 76 convention but my first ‘as the stomach turns’ moment came with “The Kiss”. I was actually supportive of the Clintons when they came on the scene and it was good to see a shift away from the old guys. Bringing Fleetwood Mac out to party was a smooth move, I thought. But then we all know how the Clinton years turned out, and they are largely responsible for the thick pageantry of today’s political conventions. I winced when Kerry came out with his snappy salute, reporting for duty. Though we know now that he never really did report for duty. Letting us all twist in the wind when it came time to display a little backbone.
So now we have conventions in sports stadiums. How quaint. I wonder if these politicians realise how disconnected from me, a regular working American, struggling to come out of the other end of this mess more or less intact, they’ve become? Umm, I think no, they don’t. Obama continues to disappoint me in nearly all he’s done. I guess at this point I shouldn’t be so naive to expect anything real from any of these people but I do still hold onto some modest expectations. Silly me…..
As an aside,
I’ve just recieved my first plea for money from Obama.
The contribution form reads,
“Dear Barack, I agree!
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for…we are the change we seek. You can count on me to support you and our movement for change all the way to the White House.”
Enclosed is my contribution…blah blah, fuketty blah.
I’m thinking, dude, you have no fukken idea just how strapped and cornered I am. A gallon of milk is anywhere from 4 to 6 dollars here and you want something from me? As Janet Jackson famously said, “what have you done for me lately”, Barack?
We’ve had eight years of Democratic rule in the last 28. That’s 20 years of Republican judicial appointments, deregulation, deficit spending, and warmongering.
The eight years we actually had a reprieve, we were saddled with the Gingrich Revolution and a president more interested in turning the Left’s party into the party of Wall Street, that we were actually able to achieve anything.
And along comes a guy that beats back that corporate wing of the party, and who is leading in the polls, and all you can do is complain that Earth isn’t Mars, or Venus. Or something.
Jesus. How do you think we got to this point as a country? How do you think we can begin to turn things around?
I think we need to hire someone to give you a pep talk every morning as soon as you wake up.
I’ll keep my clarity of thought in the mornings. It’s when I’m most likely to express what I really think. It’s the rest of the day that’s the problem. After sensory and outrage overload I’m ready for a transfusion at the end of every day.
There’s a reason why democrats have so little leadership time over the years. It’s a self fullfilling prophesy. If you do your damndest to not differentiate yourself from what you supposedly oppose then no one will be inspired to vote you in. Why would they? If your opposition to illegal wars, illegal spying, rightwing judges, and on and on amounts in the end to no more than sternly worded letters and shaking of tiny fists then gradually you will piss off those who support you the most, and you will lose them along the way. It’s continuing on as we speak. You get lied to enough, trampled on enough, taken for granted enough, you come to a fuck you fork in the road. I’m saying fuck you to the democrats after a lifetime of identifying myself as a democrat. In fact, I’m still a democrat. At least what a democrat used to be. It’s the party that has morphed over the last 30 years. They tucked their tails and ran, right, after McGovern got crushed, thinking, wrongly, that they had to be more like republicans than republicans themselves. Hell, Nixon almost seems moderate compared to a lot of the democrats we have now.
This push for Jesus time at the convention with a right winger preacher leading prayers? WTF? I mean, how phony is that?
I’ve earned my pessimism and my cynicism. I’ve earned it with years of being let down, trampled on and taken for granted. 2006 was the last time I’ll ever let a politician lie their way into getting my vote.
I need a pep talk a whole lot less than a lot of you need an intervention.
That’s 20 years of Republican judicial appointments, deregulation, deficit spending, and warmongering.
Don’t forget propaganda! We’ve had 20 years of propaganda, code words, you name it.
Actually, we’ve had a 40-year counterrevolution, with intermittent breaks (Watergate, the Carter years and only 2 of the Clinton years since the last 6 was a mix of “Repub revolution” and impeachment). A counterrevolution, IMO, that was really a continuation of the Civil War–which to me, has never quite ended. But I’m getting waist deep in the weeds, here.
So. Given all that was and still is against Obama, I’m very pleased. He cannot repair the damage of 40 years in one campaign. He cannot do it in two terms. Don’t be mad about it–be clear about it.
What Obama can do is try to repair the damage of the last 8 years and lay the foundation. If he can do that, then I will be ecstatic.
Because even those baby steps are a threat even as it is conceded that our present course is unsustainable. The opportunity, if you will, lies in the fact that TPTB have a choice: They either concede that doing the right thing–those baby steps–is the only way we as a country survive (and that they can maintain their money) or stay on the current path and self-destruct.
Given that I and folks like me are canaries in that particular mine, I’m not content to sit around and watch us self-destruct. So I choose to see how quickly and thoroughly we can repair the damage and lay the foundation.
Here’s a pep talk:
But the unsettling subtext of the Olympics has been as resonant for Americans as the Phelps triumph. You couldn’t watch NBC’s weeks of coverage without feeling bombarded by an ascendant China whose superior cache of gold medals and dazzling management of the Games became a proxy for its spectacular commercial and cultural prowess in the new century.
Even before the Olympics began, a July CNN poll found that 70 percent of Americans fear China’s economic might — about as many as find America on the wrong track. Americans watching the Olympics could not escape the reality that China in particular and Asia in general will continue to outpace our country in growth while we remain mired in stagnancy and debt (much of it held by China)
Christ Jesus, we fear every damned thing, which is why we worship guns, worship weaponry, worship war. And that isn’t enough. It will NEVER be enough. It is unsustainable.
Yet still we flail.
Fear. Fear of the “other;” fear of not being the top-dog; fear that God is just and that they will pay the price (there is no “white liberal guilt” just wingnut loathing about their inherent fear of comeuppance.) It is in the national DNA and at the root cause of our biggest national and international screw-ups.
Mr. AP and I have discussed how in some ways, Obama as president mirrors the wave of African Americans capturing mayor’s offices in city after city–just as they were being dis-invested in. Might Obama be walking into that same trap? No jobs, dis-investment, failing infrastructure–doesn’t that sound eerily familiar?
Sounds like the entire country has been turned into an “inner city,” doesn’t it?
Yet, there is no suburb to run off to. So what to do?
Self-correct or self-destruct.
That fear has been ingrained ever since Jamestown. Self-inflicted, too. The other just changes identity every few decades or so.
It isn’t just about the money.
You can help by registering people to vote.
The request I recieved was all about money. There were no other requests.
This cycle might be the first time that I do any foot work for politics. But if I do it will be to help outside parties try to gain a foothold so that some day in the future my kids can have a real choice. Thats if there’s anything left in this country worth giving a damn about.
it will be to help outside parties try to gain a foothold
This is key. Obama can do more with the support.
Thanks for getting out there.
Gee, who’d a thunk a Republican administration would order the military to censor the press in Iraq during an election year by illegally detaining reporters in order to intimidate coverage of what’s really happening over there
The same people who told former BBC correspondent Kate Adie that if journalists weren’t imbedded they would be targets.
They proved it when they intentionally bombed the Palestine hotel.
The best convention coverage in North America is available here.