Twisted Spinster

Well, I tried, I really tried, to watch the Democratic National Convention blowout last night. First, I had to find C-Span — my cable company has moved said channel around so many times I never know where it is. Once found, I became distracted by a spectacular thunderstorm outside my apartment, complete with a lightning strike that seemed to be right across the street — for a wonder the power didn’t even flicker, but that’s one reason I didn’t even bother turning on the computer last night. There was also the cat box to clean out, dirty dishes in the sink…

I think you can see where I am going with this. The DNC fandango wasn’t exactly what you’d call “compelling television.” Unless you really like watching smug, white, forty-something “hipster” housewives attempting to dance to the same damn Sixties and Seventies soul-‘n’-rock songs (Aretha U2 Fleetwood That Other Soul Guy) that they play at all these things. Oh, and Sheryl Crow came on to sing four or five of her dreary songs. And when the speechifiers came on, it was as everyone else is saying about the thing: an unending litany of America Sucks, Life In The US Is Hell On Earth, There Is No Justice In America Today — one guy even said (I swear) that America was facing the worst times he’d ever experienced, or something like that. I think that was Bill Richardson (?) the governor or New Mexico or is it Arizona? One of those dry places full of Indians and New Age Hippies, anyway. He was also the guy that seemed to equate agreeing with George Bush on this policy and changing one’s mind (specifically, McCain changing his mind) on various different policies, as “not thinking for yourself.” Anyway, life sucks in the US because of George Bush, so our only hope is to vote Obama into office, and then I guess puppies and rainbows will rain down upon the land (hard on the puppies, I guess) and that little girl whose dad works for the Obama campaign won’t be confused when the man her daddy told her was “the president” doesn’t actually turn out to be “the president” after all.

The theme of last night’s festivities was basically this: if you don’t vote for Obama you will be dissing the memory of the great Martin Luther King! Several of King’s relatives came on to speak. Incidentally, is every prominent black person a “reverend” now? One more thing: I notice, as I always have, that black people take much more care with their appearance than the typically sloppy white people do. White women in the audience were typically wearing the badly-fitting t-shirts and indifferent pants that I see them wearing everywhere in public now. Most of the women who got up on stage were dressed in suits or at least a better fitting pair of jeans (like Nancy Pelosi), but then this girl who had been in the Olympics (I forget her name) hopped up to present something or other, and she was wearing a shirt that bared an inch of midriff, a short little faded jeans skirt, and flip flops. I mean, I know it must have been hot in Denver that day but for God’s sake, you’re on national tv, not at Hooters. Anyway, as I was saying, all the black people, male and female, seemed to have taken a bit more care with their appearance — their hair done, a bit (or more than a bit) of jewelry and makeup, many of the older men wearing jackets and caps — and not all those stupid baseball caps either. If I were black the one thing that would bother me most of all would be the way white people seem to take no pride in their appearance these days, as if the universe was entitled to endure stained t-shirts, baggy gym slacks, women dressed in what seem to be pastel sacks, unkempt hair… and I’m as bad as any of them, I will admit.

There was the constant, wearying drumbeat of “we want Change! We want America to Change! We don’t like the way it is now! We want it all Changed!” that was like being smacked in the face with a board over and over. There is not and never has been any sign that any Republican president is going to do anything serious to derail any of the supposedly threatened “rights” of Americans (including the “right” of American women to “choose” — which means to choose to kill their inconvenient fetuses so their sex lives won’t be interrupted) but these were dragged out again and again by speaker after speaker as examples of what only Obama could protect and only if he were president.

So I didn’t make it to the end — in fact, I turned it off about forty-five minutes before the Great One was due to speak in front of his weird Greek temple mockup. When I turned the tv on this morning they were repeating some of his speech, so I did get to hear a little of it, enough to note that his famous baritone had taken on a metallic note, possibly from overuse, or maybe he really is Robobama.