DNC 2008: Much Ado About Nothing
The Dems are coming! The Dems are coming!
The Dems are here!
Abortions for any mother that wants one (or at least the choice to want one)! Gay marriage for all! They come bearing windmills, photovoltaic solar panels, and subsidies for corn based ethanol! Middle class tax cuts and an end to global warming for everyone! Come and see!
They’ve brought protestors! Some want to create the past while others just want to go camping. Ron Kovic! Cindy Sheehan! All the anti-war all stars are here! They’ll invade your city, screw up your traffic, and throw lavish parties all over town. There’s Spike Lee! Isn’t that Sean Penn? Bruce Springsteen just walked by!
Our city is finally interesting! There’s cops everywhere and that helicopter makes passes overhead every hour. Cow town no more. Center of democracy, baby! Progressive thinkers all the way. We’re going to give health care to everyone by day, and drink Obamatinis by night! It’ll be the best week of your life, I tell ya’! Because no one throws a party like gay folks (and you know there’s plenty in town this week…)! Sure, we may boondoggle your commute, but this is one week you’ll never forget! DNC 2008, bay-bee!!!
Does this sound like the Democratic National Convention you know? Me neither.
Ever since Denver won the Democratic National Convention more than a year and a half ago, we, the fair citizens of the Mile High City, have been force fed unfathomable amounts of bullshit about what this would do to our city.
The unprecedented volume of traffic will choke our highways and make everyone late! Commerce will shut down! People will have to work from home! Protestors will take to the streets and destroy the city! Looting! Fires! Anarchy! Run and hide! We’re all gonna die! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
Bullshit.
I fell for it. We all did. This is barely even a blip on the radar. I haven’t watched a convention in, well, ever, and having it in my city hasn’t persuaded me to start. All the horror stories we heard turned out to be nothing more than this year’s version of Y2K. Overblown hype and fear mongering from a news system that already has so little respect for us, we might as well be mushrooms. Keep ‘em in the dark, and feed ‘em bullshit. And make sure to scare ‘em a little while you’re at it. That’ll keep the ratings up, yes sir.
I left for work early this morning to compensate for what was supposed to be a city suffocating with traffic congestion. Whereas it normally takes me about 18 minutes to get from my house to my parking garage at the luxurious, fabulous, ever-exclusive Greyhound Bus Station, this morning it took me 16. And where I feared running into wayward, sleep deprived, and foul-smelling protestors, I only encountered my usual bum who asks me for change every morning without regard for the fact that he’s batting 0-for-the-century against me thus far.
And it’s not like I’m in some shitty office park in some goddamn shithole suburb like Westminster 15 miles away, either. I’m right in the heart of downtown. I’m four blocks from the Convention Center, a ½ mile from the Pepsi Center, two blocks from the Federal Reserve Bank, across the street from the candidate’s hotel, adjacent to a city park that is supposed to at various points feature both Tent State University AND Re-Create ‘68, and one floor below corporate villain Halliburton. You’d think if someone had a good chance of seeing something go down, it’d be me.
Nope. In fact, the convention has changed my life in only three noticeable ways thus far:
1) I have to show my building-issued photo ID when I enter my office building.
2) I hear more sirens from the cops below while I’m pretending to work.
and
3) The fountains in the park next to the building have been turned on for the first time in the year and a half I’ve worked here.
That’s it. No protestors. No traffic. Nothing. Not a peep.
I thought maybe I was missing something about this whole experience, so in the middle of the day I decided to check the newspaper. No shit, this was the first story I saw on the main page.
Yep, Joe Biden buys a pork sandwich for himself and his family from a teeny place on the 16th Street Mall. I’d like to thank the protestors for overplaying their hand and having a more embarrassing showing here than Trevor Hoffman had during last year’s stretch run for the Padres, but this is ridiculous. If any one of you is interested in what Joe Biden had for lunch so much that it necessitates front page coverage on a major metropolitan newspaper’s website, just go ahead and kill yourself. I found the story somewhat charming, sure, but front page? Is there really nothing else going on? I mean convention or not, there’s bound to be a more pertinent story than what a dude has for lunch. Unless that dude’s Gandhi, I suppose, but I don’t want to get off track here.
I know it sounds like I’m disappointed, but I’m really not. Not really, anyway. I’ll take peace, civility, and humiliated well-intentioned but misguided college kids any day over full blown chaos. But a part of me still bought into the hype. I wanted a little trouble getting to work. I wanted to find protestors in the park I walk through to get to work in the morning and have one of them angrily interrogate me about which company I worked for. I had an answer all ready for them – “I work for a public relations firm and represent a teacher’s union and a national wildlife refuge.” That’s true, by the way, but not the whole truth. Once they smiled, told me what a good guy I was, and let me go, I’d get close enough to the door of my building and shout, “And a major international oil company! Hahahahaha!” as I’d run to the elevators and laugh in my office about what a complete tool I am.
Others bought into the hype big time. My parents fled town and went to Chicago for the week. Hart’s company is closing up shop everyday at 11:00 a.m. and sending its employees home. The streets are fucking empty. There’s not a Denverite to be seen. My commute home was a cakewalk as always. The parties are all half-empty.
Some of my co-workers went party hopping the last few days and told me they were all underwhelming. Too many parties, not enough people. I hear the same thing happens during NBA All-Star Weekend and Oscar night. Everyone shows up at the parties looking for a few elite stars, has a free drink, and skips to the next party when a star isn’t found. I skip all that by drinking for free at home, saving the gas, and watching Dexter: Season 2 on DVD. Apparently I’m something of an anti-social prick, but then, you probably already knew that.
Truth is, I wouldn’t be if it looked like there were something good out there. From what I can tell so far, this convention is all hat and no cattle. Much ado about nothing. I’m sure if you’re heavily involved in politics, this event is like Super Bowl Weekend. And they all seem to like Denver, which is a good thing. Any time you’re city gets some love from people of national importance, you gotta be happy.
But for the average Denverite, it’s just another week at the salt mine. If you’ve never had a convention in your city, you’re not missing anything.
If you live in Denver, well, at least the fountain by your office is probably working now.
Until next time…
26 Aug 2008 E Dagger