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Just 98 Days To Go: An Article For Serious People

By Mark Grueter

The Boston Beer Works on Canal Street, just outside the Fleet Center, serves homebrewed Watermelon and Blueberry ales and a little number called Curley’s Irish Stout, named after the legendary Massachusetts politician James Michael Curley. They also cooked up an ale called “Rock the Vote” for especially for this week, which is as unfortunately insipid as the convention’s orators. Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie was there, swilling down pale ales as if they were being taken off the market. In fact, he was drinking and plotting with the sinister editors and writers of the National Review – O’Beirne, D’souza and Lowry. They were obviously plotting some sort of infiltration, which seems sophomoric to me. Anyway, after a mixture of about ten of these concoctions ourselves, my colleague Chris and I headed over to the main event.

My first reaction upon entering was one of contempt for all the punks who use status or pseudo-concerns over security as an excuse to push people around. More on this later. Next, I noticed the poor protesters, who are forced to voice their grievances within the confines of a concentration camp, complete with chained fences and barbed wire. The Democrats call this the “free speech zone” and they could not have done better. Many of the leftie demonstrators are wearing black t-shirts over their faces, I think because they imagine themselves guerilla fighters locked in an eternal struggle with the elements of bourgeois capitalism. Or perhaps they were trying to imitate the executioners of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg. Over and over they chanted “riding a bike is not a crime,” in what I thought was a rather spirited defense of a passing cyclist who was pretending to be persecuted by the authorities.

Next, an uncultured gentleman threw us out of his empty section of the press tent because we aren’t reps of any Newhouse publications (aka, those irrelevant newspapers in upstate New York that nobody reads). Bones have already been broken; by the end of the week, blood will likely be shed (Eyewitnesses informed me, by the way, that I was assaulted by two cops the other night, which explains my fractured foot. Nice work guys: now I have to write all week in a semi-comatose condition, with regular trips to the bathroom to vomit all over myself).

Even after you get into the Fleet Center, there are several different levels of access, an array of exclusionary barriers. Thanks to those parsimonious assholes – Mike Hurlbut and Francesca Gage - at the DNCC press gallery, Chris and I only have one perimeter pass and one hall pass. The perimeter pass only allows you into the vicinity of the building, an outdoor press tent, and onto the first floor, two floors down from the actual convention hall. Basically, we have access to most of everything, but only one at a time.

The press rooms are mostly dominated by the big dick-swinging outfits, but the organizers have a sort of ghetto set up for bloggers and unknown reporters like us on the 3rd floor. And on Monday night, the only seat I could get in the press balcony was located directly in back of the speakers, staring across the way at the luxurious, enclosed suites occupied by CNN and others. I have no comment on the substance of the actual speeches because as far as I could tell there wasn’t any. Then again I didn’t hear Gore’s because I was blacked out in the stairwell.

Mark Grueter is a writer living in New York City. He can be contacted here.

© 2004 Me Three