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Just 108 Days left: A Column of Mini-Columns
By Mark Grueter
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Starting Friday, the city of Boston will essentially shut down for the Democratic Convention. Officials are closing roads and businesses for the week, including Interstate Highway 93, which is the primary route through the city. I’ll be there, reporting for this site; and luckily I’ll be staying in the North End, a section of the city within walking distance of the Fleet Center, where the main events are being held. Cops and other officials will be everywhere and all of the latest low and hi-tech security gadgets will be showcased. Dozens of cameras are being set up all over the city in order to, we are told, protect against terrorist attacks. Nobody can really know exactly what to expect other than serious traffic jams and a general state of chaos and confusion.
Hillary Clinton will speak in prime time, as will Ron Reagan, the liberal, gay son of the late president; hopefully they’ll bring some much-needed substance to this charade. This past week Edwards and Kerry continued to hammer away on the themes of optimism and positivism. This very laughable non-debate over which political party is more optimistic than the other marches on because, apparently, focus group conductors insist that voters respond favorably to this sort of nonsense. Sharing values and all that sort of thing. It’s so fucking stupid, it’s not worth getting worked up over, yet I cannot help it.
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There is much gossip about Cheney being replaced by someone more likable, such as Giuliani, Powell or McCain. Everybody knows this isn’t going to happen (largely because Bush has stated categorically and repeatedly that he would never, under any circumstances, replace Cheney), but we continue to talk about it anyway because it’s fun to consider. I think we talk about all these non-stories surrounding elections because most of the real stories aren’t very interesting.
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Bush has been bashing Kerry and Edwards for, as he puts it, voting for the war in Iraq but voting against funding for the troops. This phony argument still resonates but only because Kerry and Edwards don’t defend themselves nearly as rigorously as they ought to. (Answering Bush’s charges might require making statements that could be interpreted as negativity and so obviously that must be avoided).
However, their case is a very simple one. First, they did not vote for a war in the fall of 2002. They voted in favor of giving the president the authority to wage war in Iraq believing (however naively) he would only do so after exhausting all diplomatic channels. Then, in the fall of 2003, they voted against Bush’s request for more money because they believed, as Kerry once put it, that Bush had “fucked up” the war and had proven himself incapable of conducting a just war. How is that not a reasonable position to take? It’s just a great example of how politicians say disingenuous things purely to score political points.
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Some movie theater in rural Pennsylvania offered to allow Republicans to see Fahrenheit 9/11 for free. The owner of the theater wants Republicans to see the flick because he actually thinks it may change a few minds. Michael Moore’s totally unpersuasive film will not change minds; if anything, it’ll make Republicans more pissed off at liberals and more inclined to work harder to re-elect Tex. Too bad, too, because the movie, like all of Moore's flicks, is very funny. I appreciate Moore’s sense of humor, but ultimately the case he puts forth amounts to very little. The CV says the sarcasm and jokes take away from the serious points he makes, but that gets it exactly wrong. The supposed serious points only annoy and they take away the real value of the film: it’s entertainment quality.
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A new 9/11 report discusses a connection between al Qaeda and Iran. So it looks like both Bush and Moore got it wrong. Moore said the al-Qaeda connection was with the Saudis and Bush said it was with Iraq. But evidently the Iranians are the ones we should have been the most suspicious of. But if nobody can figure it out, maybe we should just take them all out (throw in Syria and of course North Korea also and perhaps even Pakistan), just to be sure?
Click here for Grueter's previous column.
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Mark Grueter is a writer living in New York City. He can be contacted here.
© 2004 Me Three