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Friday, September 03, 2004 The Republican National Convention - Day 4 Updated! It would be easy to say that not much happened yesterday, when President George Bush put forward his plan for a second term in office, which wasn't really so much a plan as a string of generalizations brushed with a dark coat of fear. But things did happen, though there's still a lot of question as to what. The editorialists from the big newspapers I spoke with yesterday all thought that Zell Miller's Wednesday speech was a disaster. It didn't help that following his speech he challenged Chris Matthews to a duel. They wondered if Bush had repaired the damage done by crazy Zell and the consensus seemed to be that he hadn't. But there won't be polling results for another week and we may never really know beyond speculation tempered and distorted by hindsight. Sometimes, I feel like I live in a bubble, surrounded by liberals at home and writers on the road. But the fact is that everybody lives in a bubble, all we have are our snapshots and intuition. This is what happened from my end. I stayed in until four p.m. then trawled the Village looking for a t-shirt that said Gay And Proud on the back. It seemed like the correct message to bring to the floor of the convention. But I didn't find one. And I sat through the speeches wondering if I should scream something. It reminded me of college, when I saw a parked police car with the engine running, and had this sudden urge to steal it. Anyway, I couldn't find the shirt and I didn't steal the car and I arrived at Madison Square Garden just after seven o'clock. But there was nothing going on. While the Democrats had gone for eight hours a day the Republicans have been clocking in at under four and for the final day they would clock in at three. And a third of the seats were empty. The strangest part of the convention was still the phony reporter with the square, black RNC microphone interviewing delegates, the interviews projected on the big screen above the stadium. At one point there were live feeds from RNC parties in Ohio and other places, all courtesy of RNC TV. It was just like real news, except of course it wasn't. One could look at RNC TV as the next mutation of Fox News. With partisan television so popular now, and with Fox already accepted as the media arm of the Republican Party, why not just go one step further, which is what the Republicans have done. The strange thing about RNC TV was not that speakers were being projected on the screen of Madison Square Garden but more the deliberate illusion being created that they were actually being interviewed by a reporter when in fact the reporter was an actress, the interviewees were coached on what to say, the responses were scripted. This is the New New TV and it fits perfectly into the puzzle of illusion that was the Convention. Fake news, fake interviews, untrue assertions and accusations, a parade of black speakers and supporters when in fact the percentage of African Americans in the Republican Party is so low that one could feasibly claim, for all practical purposes, there are no black Republicans. Add to the mix the Republicans that were told to stay home, Tom Delay, John Ashcroft, or kept out of the limelight, Ralph Reed, Jerry Falwell, as well as those asked to speak during prime time, four out of eight speakers considered moderates, three of eight speakers pro-choice, and you pretty much have the anatomy of a lie. Bush's speech stretched for an hour, and like Cheney, he didn't veer much from his standard stump speech. There was this nugget of imperialism: "The story of America is the story of expanding liberty, an ever-widening circle, constantly growing to reach further and include more. Our nation's founding commitment is still our deepest commitment. In our world, and here at home, we will extend the frontiers of freedom." And then this: "Another priority in a new term will be to help workers take advantage of the expanding economy to find better, higher-paying jobs. In this time of change, many workers want to go back to school to learn different or higher-level skills. So we will double the number of people served by our principal job training program and increase funding for community colleges." I've heard this before from Bush. He talks about community colleges a lot and mentions often how many workers don't even have a two-year college education. Bush got to travel this past year as he learned some things that he was able to work into his oration, "As I've travelled the country, I've met many workers and small business owners who have told me they are worried they cannot afford health care." He also found out why, "As I have travelled our country, I have met too many good doctors, especially OB-GYNS, who are being forced out of practice because of the high cost of lawsuits." Bush continued the lies of transition and association that were the hallmark of the speakers over four days. "Because we acted to defend our country, the murderous regimes of Saddam Hussein and the Taliban are history. More than 50 million people have been liberated, and democracy is coming to the broader Middle East." Every day at least one of the two prime-time speakers found a way to infer that Saddam Hussein was a threat to America and then backed it up by stating that people in the Middle East had been liberated. But the evidence and the conclusion had no relation and in fact, there was no evidence, just a series of conclusions, presented without support, in support of one another. Not much later Bush related a letter he had come across: "One Army Specialist wrote home - 'We are transforming a once sick society into a hopeful place ... The various terrorist enemies we are facing in Iraq' he continued, 'are really aiming at you back in the United States. This is a test of will for our country. We soldiers of yours are doing great and scoring victories in confronting the evil terrorists.' - That young man is right," Bush said. "Our men and women in uniform are doing a superb job for America." But actually, the letter was from Joe Roche, an adjunct fellow at the National Center For Public Policy Research. In other words, it wasn't a letter at all, it was a public relations stunt. Josh found me hunkered in the second press-row next to the Pittsburgh Gazette. "Did you hear what he just said?" Josh asked me. I was digging beneath the table for a wire or an extension chord. "I did," I told him, pushing my chair back and opening my bag. "A sick society full of various terrorist enemies." Josh was wild eyed and excited. He had been hanging out with a protester. She had snuck inside and she was going to pull her dress off revealing a pink slip written in damming slogans. "If she went right now it would be awesome," I said, forgetting what I was looking for or why I was looking for it. Then there was screaming, but it wasn't the woman Josh was with. The crowd turned on the protester, opposite the congressional gallery, unleashing a storm of boos inside the Garden just as Bush was re-making his case for going into Iraq. The president stuttered and didn't seem to recover. A short while later there was more screaming, a woman in a pink slip charged the media area, knocking over chairs, before disappearing inside a swell of security, briefly her leg or arm stuck from knot of holstered pistols, then she was gone. The delegates were booing again and the cameras were turned away from Bush's "clear moral purpose"and "careful diplomacy." The third protester was caught on tape. At the end of the night I crept through the city in a slow cab toward a French restaurant on the upper west side. I was with two journalists who knew more and had been doing this longer than me and would still be doing it after I was done. It seemed an appropriate place to finish the evening, a French restaurant. The one place in New York guaranteed absent any GOP. The streets were thick with barricades and demonstrations, the cops pulled their neon plastic fences across the streets. Protesters yelled at me through the open cab window, "Burn in hell Republican." I gave them the thumbs up, but why did they think I was a Republican? I hadn't made it home in two days and was wearing cargo pants, four earrings, and a Happy Baby t-shirt (which I later took off and gave to Steven Sherril). There was good wine and steak courtesy of The Washington Post. When M. ordered the wine the waitress lifted her chin smiling and said, "So, you know your wine." Later, the staff of The Majority Report showed up, and Bearman, Robert Smith and a gaggle of NPR reporters, editors from Harpers. We had all gravitated naturally to the anonymity offered by the French. I'm not a person that would necessarily know the difference between good and bad wine but in the morning I woke up in Brooklyn feeling better than if I hadn't drank at all. posted by Stephen Elliott 1:37 PM | link | |
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