6:53 (I'm beginning with recorded material from about 2 hours ago. I'll be catching up.): "Being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare. It's patriotism," says Newark Mayer Cory Booker. He gets a huge ovation that turns into a "U.S.A." chant. They're "U.S.A."ing at the idea of patriotism, presumably. Not taxes. Oh, but paying taxes = patriotism. Or, specifically, being asked to pay is patriotism. Who is the patriot in that grammatical construction? I think it's the folks who are asking other people to pay.
7:11 (Still catching up.): Gov. Bev Perdue sounded hoarse and a bit sick as she vowed to deliver North Carolina to the Democrats. A film about health care. A young man whose parents died in a way that supposedly might have been avoided if we'd had Obamacare. They were both scientists, he says, so I'm not clear why they did not have health insurance.
7:19: The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Congress, Charles Gonzales, uses the motto "e pluribus unum" — out of many, one — to mean that all the people become one, instead of the idea that the states were brought together into one nation. The idea that the people merged into a single entity — that sounds like fascism to me. Oddly, as it repurposes the old motto, it expresses the old fashioned idea of the melting pot.
7:30: White males of the gubernatorial kind — Quinn & Kaine.
7:32: A black speaker wedged in — the mayor of Charlotte — before the next pale male. But it's a big one, so I'll go light on the fast-forwarding I'm using to try to catch up to live. It's Harry Reid.
7:36: Reid wants us to fear the Tea Party. They are "extremists and ideologues who leave no room for reason," and they're taking over the Republican Party.
7:42: Nancy Pelosi is introduced along with all the Democratic women of the House. There's disco music playing. The hell? Then I detect that it's "I'm Every Woman." Again with this creepy merging of individuals into the whole.
I'm every woman, it's all in meSee what I mean? That's creepy when it's the government. When it's some lady you're having sex with, I guess it's sexy.
Anything you want done, baby
I'll do it naturally
I'm every woman, it's all in me
I can read your thoughts right now
Every one from A to Z
I can cast a spellNow, that's just scary when it's a whole horde of government women coming at you. What is this "special brew"? Soma? But anytime you feel/Danger or fear/Instantly I will appear... Nancy Pelosi will appear?! I can sense your needs/Like rain on to the seeds/I can make a rhyme/Of confusion in your mind... no, no, no, no that's not what I want to hear from the government!
With secrets you can't tell
Mix a special brew
Put fire inside of you
But anytime you feel
Danger or fear
Instantly I will appear, 'cause
I'm every woman
8:03: Speaking of scary... it's Jimmy Carter (on film). He's well made-up, well preserved, and well modulated. But he seems like a nice man, there, doesn't he? And he tells us Barack Obama and Joe Biden will lead us to a better future.
8:18: Huge storm here! We just lost power for a few minutes. I lost a whole paragraph of snark about Teddy Kennedy. A young Kennedy — Joseph P. Kennedy III, running for Congress — said the spirit of Teddy was with us here today. I had some prime snark! Did Teddy bring this terrible storm that drowned all my Mary Jo Kopechne material?
8:25: NARAL! It's Nancy Keenan, for "safe, legal" abortions, with "dignity and privacy." A woman should not be forced to have an ultrasound "against her will." And "rape is rape." President Obama had "the courage to stand with Sandra Flook" (is that how we're pronouncing it now?). "Women in America cannot trust Mitt Romney."
8:33: I've caught up to Rahm Emanuel. "The American auto industry is not just surviving..." Hmm. He professes to know with "absolute certainty" that something will happen in the future and "land with a thud on the Oval Office desk." Who do you want there? He's saying that like it's obvious.
8:38: It's Obama's little sister Maya and Michelle's older brother Michael. Nice. Lovely. But let's skip the details.
8:45: I'm finally completely caught up. Lily Ledbetter is speaking. This is the question of "equal pay for equal work," but the Supreme Court case she lost was a matter of interpreting statutory language about how soon you need to bring a lawsuit. I feel sorry for her, but I'm also uneasy about her as an icon representing things that are not what the court case was about.
8:48: Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts, is able to compare himself to Romney, who was, a while back, the governor of Massachusetts. He's yelling and screaming about the economy. Obama has been wonderful!!!
8:53: "I will not stand by and let him be bullied out of office!" Patrick propaganda.
8:55: Wow, everyone looks really sweaty. Did the AC break down?
9:03: Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley. I have no idea why this man has been given this prominence. Here's his question for Republicans: "How much less do you really think would be good for this country?"
9:07: Time for the keynote address at last. It's Julian Castro, the mayor of San Antonio.
9:17: Castro seems like he could have been a speaker at last week's GOP convention. He keeps talking about "hard work" and even "rugged individualism." But then he says "Like many of you, I watched last week's Republican convention, and they told a few stories of individual success. We all celebrate individual success, but the question is: How do we multiply that success? The answer is President Barack Obama."
9:22: Castro gets a refrain going: "Mitt Romney says no."
10:00: Michelle Obama is wearing an orange dress that in the close-up looks like a bathing suit. Lots of shoulder and arm display. Her speech goes on and on, filled with stuff that has no relationship to the question of whether Barack Obama should be reelected. He thinks his little girls are important and he's proud of them and eats dinner with them and counsels them about their middle-school friendships. Okay. I phase out. What's the point of all this? Then — this seems near the end — she starts doing this fake stuttering (as if she's talkin' 'bout my g-g-g-g-generation): "A-a-and he reminds me, he reminds me that we are playing a long game here..." (Meade says: "Not 9 holes, it's 18 holes.") "A-a-a-and that change is hard. A-a-a-and change is slow and it never happens all at once but that eventually we get there. We always do. W-w-w-w-we get there, because of folks like my dad." (Earlier in the speech she described her father.) "Folks like Barack's grandmother. Men and women who-who said to themselves, I-I may not have a chance to fulfill my dreams, but maybe my children will, maybe my grandchildren will. See-see-see, so many of us stand here tonight because of their sacrifice...." Arghhhh! This is the same thing we heard last week. It's so earnest. Stage-y earnest. But what does it say? Who should be President?!
10:16: Michelle's speech goes on a long time. I don't really see the point of it. There's a theme of waiting patiently with the expectation that our children or their children will have a better life, but what does that mean for the election? It seems to say that we should reelect Obama despite the lack of economic progress. She speaks of "unwavering hope grounded in unyielding struggle." Now there's this choked-up quality in her voice as she says she's "Mom-in-Chief," doing what's "best for our girls." It's getting very hammy. Vote for my husband. That's the end. And then the music comes up: "Move your body... move your little hips...." What?!
10:26: An unusually young woman comes out to do the closing prayer, and it goes on for almost 4 minutes. "As a young woman of faith and a leader...." Who is she? The executive director of Blood: Water Mission. I don't really understand what that is — and I did Google it — so I'm left assuming that the Democrats are simply hot to reach out to young women.
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