The Democratic National Convention

The media and my own television have been focused this week on the Democratic National Convention. Try as I might to write about the only thing going on, it's very hard to find an interesting spin on the proceedings.

Al Sharpton's speech was fun. I like that the teleprompter worker couldn't find where he should be, because Al was running on his own. Maybe this is why it was so amusing. Al's no politician. He speaks to bluntly and honestly to ever be elected. And, it's a little frightening, but a lot of what he says makes sense.

No, I'm not ready to buy 40 acres and a donkey for the next slave descendant that I meet, but I do agree that keeping non-English speakers out of the country is bad. Weren't almost all of our ancestors non-English speaking immigrants fairly recently in the big scheme of things? And who are the "lazy Americans" that stagnate the economy, white guys who write web log entries at work, or Hispanics who pick fruit 60 hours a week for a little off the book cash?

The "Help is on the Way" slogan that was unveiled is nothing short of offensive. Americans aren't a bunch of helpless babies waiting on the Democrats to ride in on their white horses and give us the help we need. I think that's a serious blunder.

Good Grief. Is he trying to get people to laugh at him? Rediculous.

The crowd shots of the convention are the most fun. I play a game with myself: Random delegate, or celebrity? Ben Afflack, Michael Moore, and the 50 year old, overweight black woman in a business suit are easy. But, is that semi-decrepit man the guy who played Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP, or just a random delegate. I read that Jerry Springer was a delegate, but I didn't see him on the cameras.

The stupidest thing that I've seen in a long time is the roll call of states giving their votes to the person at the podium. They drag out the whole thing, as in, "the great people of Delaware, on behalf of Secretary of State Joe Johnson, Governor Cletus Williamson, blah blah blah, and proud to be the first state to elect an African American public service commissioner (great applause), blah blah blah, and the land of beautiful salmon catching bald eagles, proudly case 12 votes for the next President of the United States, John Kerry. (great applause).

Honestly, I only sat through this up until the "A" states were done. It was funny how ridiculous the whole process was. I think CSPAN was the only channel showing all of this, so I really don't know why they bother with all of that silly crap.

I watched CSPAN, because it was the only place to see the full musical acts as they performed. I didn't realize that they had good bands warm up the crowd for the speakers. The networks and CNN might have shown a minute or two of John Cougar, Willie Nelson, or the Black Eyed Peas, but they assumed that their insight was more interesting to the viewer than the performance.