Blogging from the convention

Or, more accurately, blogging from the couch while watching the convention on TV. Or more accurately still, blogging the day after sitting on the couch and watching the convention on TV. But "blogging from the convention" sounds cooler.

Two days down in the Democratic convention and we've already seen a damn-the-doctors appearance by Ted Kennedy, Michelle Obama's I-am-not-a-Black-Panther introduction and Hillary Clinton's attempt to sway the most irrational bloc of her supporters to vote Obama. All of this just days after Senator Joe Biden was announced as Barack Obama's running mate.

Let's take all these things one at a time, shall we? The first one's easy - I didn't see Ted Kennedy's speech, but he's party royalty and he no doubt got the crowd fired up. Moving on to Michelle Obama, I have to say I was impressed but not entirely convinced that she presented the "softer" side of herself and her husband, which I think was one of the main objectives of the speech. The fact is, she's just too accomplished, intelligent and independent to play the demure, cuddly Political Wife, and no amount of talk about family could distract me from the fact that she's a fierce force. In other words, she's a lot like Hillary Clinton! Considering that Hillary helped Bill win two elections, the Democrats should be grateful to have a tough, no-bullshit potential First Lady in the campaign and should stop trying to soften her edges. And maybe Hillary, if she's serious about stumping for Barack Obama, should draw more attention to the evident parallels between Michelle and herself.

Which brings us to Hillary's speech. It was as forceful, charismatic and crowd-pleasing as any that I've ever seen by her. Like a lot of pundits, I was a bit surprised that she didn't make more of an attempt to sell Obama's character, but her job was ensure that Clintonistas become Obamaniacs on election day, no matter how reluctant they are to do so, and so it made the most sense to focus on the fact that anyone who agrees with her policies should think of the bigger picture and check off the box marked "Obama." Did it work? No way of knowing, but I'm a little skeptical about how big the contingent is that would support Hillary in the primaries and vote for John McCain in the primaries. Then again, America's recent electoral history is a history of people voting against their own interests.

At first, I wondered if Obama had voted against his own interests by choosing Biden as his VP candidate. His whole message has been about change, and Biden's been in the Senate since the Paleozoic era. His campaign has been obsessive about staying on message, and Biden's got a notorious penchant for speaking his mind, which means he sometimes blurts out some very unfortunate things - such as his description, early in the primary season, of Obama as "clean" and "well-spoken," a revealing and common backhanded compliment doled out by white people who expect nothing but G-Unit clothing and street slang from black people. However, all of the other VP candidates had fatal flaws. Obama needed to balance his relative inexperience with experience, and Biden has that. He couldn't pick a woman that wasn't Hillary, because that would look like shameless (and ineffective) pandering. And he couldn't pick Hillary, because as popular as she is, she's guaranteed poison to many voters and too easy for Republicans to attack. Also, I don't think she was very much interested in the job.

So I'm warming to Biden. He's a principled guy and he's also not shy about the streetfighting tactics that campaigns sometimes require - tactics that Obama claims to oppose. Now, Obama has a surrogate who can go into the trenches and yet can be plausibly denied or rebuked if he goes too far. The first clue as to how Biden will be used comes tonight, when he addresses the convention. I'm not sure if I'll be able to watch, so someone might have to tell me about it. 

By the way, the definition of nerdiness is being tempted to skip out on a party with free booze in order to watch speeches at a political convention in a country that you can't even vote in.

Don't believe me. Believe TV

Really, I mean that. Seriously. Way back when I first started this blog, I promised a big, long, thorough dismantling of 9/11 conspiracy theories, particularly those espoused in Zeitgeist, a film that makes Michael Moore look like the model of journalistic ethics and technique. But I never got to it, in part because of the size of the task and in part because of a lack of confidence in my ability to complete it. 

Thank God there's TV. CBC's The Passionate Eye is about to air a series of documentaries about this very subject, documentaries that promise to (to paraphrase a press release I got) debunk some persistent 9/11 conspiracy theories while also challenging the "official" version.

The docs air on Sept. 7, 8 and 14, and you can find stuff on at least one of them here. I'm sure the non-internet-challenged among you can find out more about the other ones by cruising around the linked site.

Why should I do the heavy intellectual lifting when our tax dollars already provide the brainy forklift? I can't think of a reason, so I'll just encourage you to watch. Though I'll disown the docs if I disagree with them, of course.

Hey, don't you wonder what I think about Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate? I sure do, so I'll get to that later this week.

Chinese food for thought

By now everyone's heard about the controversy concerning the parts of the Olympic opening ceremonies that were faked - digitized "fireworks" and the replacement of a seven-year-old anthem singer (although not her voice)  from the televised event. Chinese officials wanted a prettier girl for the broadcast, so they found one to lip-sync to the national anthem as sung by the first girl.

The reaction from most of the Western media was a combination of shock and I-told-you-so - the fakery was described simultaneously as representative of China's morally bankrupt authoritarian society and a particular low point for said society. Certainly, it was viewed as embarrassing. Which raise the question: if China was looking at the Beijing Olympics as a means to show off its greatness, did they not see that they would actually lose points with the rest of the world for doing this kind of thing?

I suspect the answer is that they did, but just didn't care. And I think that answer contradicts the common wisdom about China's approach to the Olympics and to the rest of the world in general. Specifically, the opening ceremony scandal reveals that China - which did little to hide it after the fact - doesn't crave global respect the way we often assume it does. Its main audience for any major event isn't the citizens of Canada or the U.S. or Britain or Japan or India. It's the citizens of China. 

A very interesting author was on The Daily Show last night, talking about how China's government is no longer really a Communist government, but has struck an unspoken deal with its people to bring in global investment and keep the economy growing in exchange for a permanent hold on power. The government also strengthens its grip by stoking national pride. 

The Olympics fit both of these objectives. They bring in gobs of money and they bolster the nationalism of the Chinese people. The rest of the world is beside the point, because as a growing economic powerhouse with 1.3 billion people, China really doesn't need the respect of the rest of the world. It just needs its own people to keep believing the country is perfect and powerful. Thus, any means of putting on a perfect spectacle, including CGI fireworks and seven-year-old Milli Vanillis, is justified.

Eleanor Rigby moment

Sometimes the strangest things can cause your gut to drop and a little wet ball of emotion to gurgle up into your throat. Take this story, for example, about the passing of the world's tallest woman.

What got me was her 1974 letter to the Guinness Book of World Records. Specifically, what got me was that she wasn't looking so much for fame as she was a companion. Made me think of how easy it is to find yourself lonely, whether you have any obvious outward "deficiencies" or not. Certainly, it's easy to imagine how a 7-foot-7 woman would feel so lonely that she'd reach out to the Guinness Book as a dating service.

We in the West who are middle class and up have been rightly pegged as having an oversized sense of entitlement, and that extends to relationships. We've taught ourselves to think that finding the perfect mate isn't just a possibility, it's a birthright. So we search out the most beautiful, the most sexually satisfying, the kindest and the most intellectually stimulating partner, someone who shares all of our hopes and dreams and sensibilities, and we refuse to settle for anything less than all of this, packaged together in one person. Meanwhile, thousands of people go their entire lives without having even the most basic of these needs met.

Okay, so maybe Sandy Allen ended up in a fulfilling monogamous relationship, or satisfied her physical desires with a long list of sexual partners. The article doesn't say. And maybe this entry is coloured just a little by recent developments in my own personal life. But the point still stands: life comes with no guarantee of love, and those of us who have experienced it should remember how lucky we are.

What's worse than a Greyhound headhunter?

Answer: People who think the murder was justified.

I wrestle with the question of God's existence. I certainly don't believe It conveys Its message by orchestrating ugly tragedies. But if God is wrathful, I suspect Its anger is directed more at these assholes than, say, homosexuals or abortionists.

The Day(s) the Blog Stood Still

It's been awhile, and there are a few reasons for that. Jarring, emotional blows in both the personal and professional sides of life. And since I don't treat this blog like my diary, I'm not inclined to unpack it all and sort through it here. Suffice it to say that nobody died, even if a very cherished and ephemeral "thing" did.

So life and blog both go on. As does the U.S. election, which, after the grueling Democratic primary season, seems to finally be ramping up. Attack ads, silly accusations and attempts to reduce the whole affair into reductive catchphrases. It's on, and I have some early thoughts.

The first is that anyone who expected Obama and McCain to make good on their promise of a high-minded, respectful contest is likely already disappointed. Obama's halo is fading as he shows that he's not above playing politics (surprise!), changing his mind on issues like public campaign financing. And McCain, with his stilted speeches, catering to the far right and outright strange choices of attack issues seems like a shriveled shadow of the candidate that seemed so exciting in 2000. 

These are two decent men, I think, but also two competitive and egotistical men. But the early returns suggest that McCain is a little lost, while Obama - though obviously tired - still has a clarity of purpose. And I have to credit him with the line of the election so far, which came in response to Republican ads mocking him for his suggestion that Americans save money on gas by keeping their tires inflated (which actually does save a significant amount of gas).

"It's like they take pride in being ignorant," Obama said, a comment that deserved to be punctuated by the sound of a nail being hit on the head. 

As much as it was a "you go, O" moment, I wonder if this kind of pointed commentary could backfire on him. A certain segment of American voters actually does take pride in being ignorant. Or, more accurately, takes pride in being called ignorant by snooty liberals. Obama's had problems shaking the elitist label, and lines like these - while they rally his supporters - could turn off some of the voters he needs to court.