Convention-goers appall
Jillian Melchior
Issue date: 9/11/08 Section: Beyond
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If that sounds melodramatic, the convention extravaganza was. And if my reaction as follows sounds jaded, maybe it will balance my Hillsdale idealism into something realistic and useful.
Conventions mutate into a strange entity. In the hands of the party, politics become a vulgar parody.
The publicity and morale that conventions generate spill from the bowels of better times. Yes, for a purpose, but it's still tough to reconcile.
At Obama's Rocky Mount transfiguration, I knew I was in for the overdraft of public emotion.
(Ironic, isn't it, that Obama makes me a bit less hopeful, a bit more cynical.)
But a week later, I found myself staring with contempt at a woman whose blue jeans scarcely bundled her abundant rear. She was a mass of red, white and blue and big hair. She clenched her molars in a grin, clapping her paws and waving her big cardboard sign in time with the peppy music. She was not dignified. She showed no sign of thought, merely synchronizing with the raw ecstasy all around her.
She was a proud, proud conservative reaching the pinnacle of titillation right before John McCain took the stage to accept the Republican nomination. She was everywhere.
I expected better, at least from the conservatives.
Conventions are engineered to rile a crowd into a carefully choreographed frenzy. It makes great B-roll, but it's jarring to watch a room full of people be manipulated - to watch them submit so easily.
McCain began speaking.
It was unexceptional. He was most interesting when talking about Vietnam - but self-proclaimed heroes always seem a bit conceited, anyway.
McCain lacked the charisma Obama brought to the stage. He seemed tired. He put up his palms to shush the crowd.
And then it happened.
Two women shattered the event; I couldn't make out what they screeched, but it was definitely anti-McCain.
I watched the overwrought crowd erupt. It gradually snarled into a chant of "U-S-A! U-S-A!" But the name of my country reverberated with vitriol, like an insult at the two ridiculous women (one of whom was nearly falling out of her shirt, skimpy pink silk scrawled with angry permanent marker).
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