Day one
By tacitus Posted in Special Events — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
As has been noted, we're here in NYC, and now at the Garden itself.
Behold! And do read on.
As has also been noted, the news value of the average convention is about that of a middle school play. First half of the first day is definitely living down to that expectation. We had our "official" RNC bloggers' breakfast, where we all gathered together to hear from Matthew Dowd. Which, I must admit, was more informative than I expected, even if we did get some of the standard-issue play-the-media spiel (really, we expect very little post-RNC bounce for the President!). Still, he had me up until the point where he announced: "The President is conservative -- even he says it." Well. I'm convinced. Then there are the standard-issue lists of minor celebrities encountered: for me, G. Gordon Liddy, Christine Todd Whitman, Dennis Hastert, Alan Keyes, and -- my cup runneth over -- Ed Koch, who blogged at my table on the importance of the Bush doctrine. Which is to say, he had another blogger type in the words, "the Bush doctrine is important." More or less. Indeed, for this whopping value, you can easily turn to Fafnir (I AM TYPIN ON ATRIOS'S LAPTOP RIGHT NOW), who gets convos right without even being there.
Oh, and the RNC bloggers' station? No live internet coming through the LAN for the first few hours. Cripes.
No, this isn't terribly interesting.
So what are we going to do about it? For my part, I'm ditching this scene for the afternoon and heading down to 8th Avenue for the purported major protest march happening there. Up until the President strides to the podium on Thursday night, that's where this story is going to be -- in the streets. Time to head out there -- where the Kerry voters will be.
Bless 'em all.