Reality TV

I have found my reality TV addiction. No, it isn't one of the scripted pieces of dreck on Fox, it is the C-Span coverage of the Democratic National Convention. No commercials. No commentary. No "fair and balanced" talking heads. Nope. Just pure convention, all talking, all the time.
I've loved watching the national conventions since I was just a Yellow Puppy.

Last night was some of the best stuff I've seen in years. It was wonderful to see Jimmy Carter (sounding, however, like his dentures were loose, or he'd just come from having a root canal) blasting the Bush policies of unilateralism and intolerance.

And my old flame, Al Gore. I'd seen Al speak in person way back in the old days, before he was anything other than a rising Young Democrat. I never understood why people thought he was stiff and humorless, except that is what the pundits decided during the last election cycle.

Last night he was funny, and eloquent, and yes, bitter about the last election. As well he should be. And he gave the people in Boston a direction for their own bitterness: Don't let this ever happen again. Don't let the Supreme Court ever select another President, and don't let this President select the next Supreme Court.

Like Al, I've never forgotten how Bush came to be in the White House. Nor have I lost my bitterness. It's a lot like my divorce. I had to remember all the hurt, and all the cruelty to maintain the fight. At the same time, I had to channel that energy outward, and not inward, so that, although the bitterness and resentment informed my actions, it did not change me into a bitter and resentful person.

And then we had Herself, Ms. Rodham Clinton. Wowza. I loved that she pointed out that SHE had been at Ground Zero on September 12th, unlike someone else, namely the duly appointed President of the United States. (Maybe he was still digesting the plot of My Pet Goat.)

The evening wrapped up with Bill, another reminder of my first marriage. I never cared much for Bill Clinton, because his personality was so much like the AntiChrist: slick, insincere, a survivor of childhood abuse, and over-driven because of it. Unlike the AntiChrist, though, Clinton was not a sociopath, and did honestly care about other people. His presidency was proof of that. Last night he was in rare form. In my opinion, it is Bill Clinton, and not Ronald Reagan, who should be remembered as The Great Communicator.

So yes, I was glued to the set by the spectacle of reality TV. I'll be there again tonight. And the night after that.

In closing, let me leave you with some quotes from great politicians of the past:

"I have always strenuously supported the right of every man to his own opinion, however different that opinion might be to mine. He who denies another this right makes a slave of himself to his present opinion, because he precludes himself the right of changing it." -- Thomas Paine, 1783

"Free speech exercised both individually and through a free press, is a necessity in any country where people are themselves free." -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1918

"The truth is found when men are free to pursue it." -- Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1936

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- George Orwell, 1945

"Any time we deny any citizen the full exercise of his constitutional rights, we are weakening our own claim to them." -- Dwight David Eisenhower, 1963

"What is objectionable, what is dangerous about extremists is not that they are extreme, but that they are intolerant." -- Robert F. Kennedy, 1964

"Go fuck yourself." -- Dick Cheney, 2004