Pubdate: Mon, 31 Jul 2000
Source: National Review (US)
Copyright: 2000 National Review
Contact:  215 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10016
Website: http://www.nationalreview.com/
Forum: http://www.nationalreview.com/soapbox/soapbox.html
Author: Jonah Goldberg, NRO editor

SHALLOW CONVENTION

Where John McCain Paid A Price Sunday

H. L. Mencken once wrote, "There is something about a national
convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging.

It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard upon
the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it is
somehow charming.

One sits through the long sessions wishing heartily that all the
delegates and alternates were dead and in hell -- and suddenly there
comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so
unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous
year in an hour."

I waited and waited but that exhilarating hour never arrived at
"Shadow Convention." Tragically, Arianna Huffington has given birth to
another silly idea. Entering the "convention hall" you realize right
away that simply by being there you are lending credibility to a hoax.
It's no "hall" in any real sense so much as a mid-size college
auditorium. The University of Pennsylvania's "Annenberg Auditorium" is
really the sort of venue where bad poets show their wares to the sorts
of college kids who feel superior because they are able to endure bad
poetry.

While an exact headcount is impossible, I would wager that between 30
percent and 40 percent of the people filling the seats of the Shadow
Convention on Sunday were either the press, staffers, or members of
one speaker or another's entourage.

There were no actual "delegates" in any real sense.

Indeed, one wonders whether Huffington would have gone through with it
all if C-SPAN hadn't promised to be there.

As a political convention it had as much legitimacy as a "town
meeting" in Colonial Williamsburg. One almost feels like the Shadow
Convention will next appear at Epcot Center filling the space between
Mickey Mouse's noontime parade and the all-bear jamboree.

Say what you want about the staging and choreography of the Democratic
and Republican conventions, but they are in fact real political events
where grassroots activists participate in an admittedly staged but no
less significant event.

The Republicans and Democrats who earn a spot in a delegation worked
to get there.

The "delegates" at the Shadow Convention were simply cronies and
lackeys of various liberal front groups or the beneficiaries of some
truly "Big Money" from the likes of political dabblers like George
Soros.

Admittedly it's hard to take the whole thing too seriously because the
organizers don't quite take themselves very seriously.

To the extent the "event" resembles an actual convention it's only as
farce.

Rather than have state banners from you know, "states" like Texas or
Kansas, young clever folk hold up banners reading "Disillusioned" and
"2 Poor 4 Access" "Downsized" and "The Rest of Us."

This sort of sophomoric satire and bottled outrage does little to
persuade anyone who isn't still auditioning for the job of Eva Peron.
At the convention Arianna Huffington says that she was "fooled" by
Newt Gingrich but now she is serious about Sen. John McCain. "Senator
McCain," she said in her introductory remarks. "You may not want the
honor; but there would be no Shadow Convention without you."

It seems pretty obvious he doesn't want that honor now. McCain gave a
serious speech at an unserious event and he paid the price for it.
Sitting just one seat over from me in the ample media seating section
were three obvious "Remember Seattle!" vets. Two of them sported
bandanas on their heads and jewelry on their faces.

Before the event even began, some Shadow Convention organizers asked
them to get up and move to a different section.

They not only refused, the hemptivists pretended not to hear the
repeated and heated requests.

They sat there in what they thought was pacifist resistance. Only a
coward of profound wussitude or someone totally convinced of man's
innate goodness could conclude that these patchouli-soaked hemptivists
were going to behave themselves. It was a sign of the
not-ready-for-prime-time nature of the event that the flacks simply
gave up. And, of course they heckled John McCain.

"How many Indians have you killed?" shouted one. "Save black mesa"
they chanted in unison, in reference to some great crime McCain is
allegedly party to. More voices from the balcony chimed in, screaming
"Genocide!" and various things about Peabody coal. Finally, McCain
turned to someone offstage, presumably Huffington, and said "If you
like I don't have to continue."

By this time the crowd had turned on the young men and heckled them.
For a moment it seemed like Menken's "exhilarating hour" was
transpiring. But the moment died down right before it got really
interesting. McCain finished his speech to some snickers (Al Franken
and others in the crowd thought it was hilarious that McCain would
support Gov. Bush and the Republican party).

Once McCain left the stage -- in a huffy hurry -- a sizable chunk of the
crowd left. What followed were a series of charming films from some
black kids and some speeches about why drugs should be legal and how
Americans need a guaranteed living wage and full access to health
care. The event closed with Huffington and liberal comedian Al Franken
attempting some "political satire." It's unclear how rehearsed the
routine was, but it felt painfully so. Which one of them actually
thinks there's chemistry between them is a mystery, but their stilted
dialogue with each other seemed like a Burns and Allen routine without
the marriage, affection, charm, or humor.

Franken had some funny recycled lines about DNC fundraisers. Donate
$100,000 and you get a slow waltz with Hillary, $50,000 you get a
tango with Tipper, and for 50 bucks you get a lap dance from Janet
Reno. And -- he left out -- for five dollars you get to never hear that
joke again.

The real fraud of this very shallow convention was not that it was
what Daniel Boorstin would call a pseudo-event, but that it pretends
to stand for some kind of "new" politics.

Huffington reaches new heights of self-parody when she laments the
influence of big money when it was her husband who broke the bank
trying to buy a Senate seat. But that's beside the point -- cataloging
the apostasy and hypocrisy of Huffington's latest incarnation could be
a full-time occupation. No, the real fraud is, again, the idea that
this is not simply the vanity cause of a bunch of leftist activists
and limousine liberals.

It is abundantly clear from the crowd that the campaign-finance-reform
movement is really little more than an attempt of liberal interests to
further regulate the form and content of American politics.

The supporters of the Shadow Convention, almost without exception are
liberal and left-libertarian social planners.

The lobby outside was jammed with tables from warmed over socialist
and gitchy-goo liberal groups. These are the people who believe their
interests will be served by campaign-finance reform.

Huffington claimed she was speaking for the 50 percent of Americans
who don't plan to vote -- perhaps the easiest constituency to lay claim
to other than the ranks of America's comatose.

Ellen Miller, one of the leading campaign-finance reformers in
America, said to the crowd "If someone is going to own this
government, it might as well be us." The "us" she was referring to
were sitting in the room. "Unless the problem of money in politics is
solved, nothing else will ever change," Huffington said in perhaps her
biggest applause line. This is not only a profoundly ignorant and
ahistorical statement it is demagogic and cynical.

The role of "big money" has been increasingly regulated in the last
two generations. Do Huffington and her crowd honestly believe there's
been no progress on the environment, civil rights, or economic
prosperity? If so, they are fools. If they do recognize the progress
and say this stuff anyway, they are liars.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens