#DNC08 - Some tweets and more

Night One of the Democratic National Convention, America's answer to the Olympics. Every four years, we hold a major competition and the winner gets...not a gold medal, but a chance to fuck up the world. Or at least that's what's happened the past eight years.

Seriously, I'm struck by the similarity in handicapping between, say, Chris Matthews and Bob Costas. If process is what counts in this world more than product, than what difference does it make if the topic being masticated is Barack Obama's chances or Michael Phelps? Barack has Michelle; Michael has Debbie. And who might we cast as Hillary in this scenario? Probably the Chinese--that nation willing to do anything to win the gold, or so would say Clinton's detractors.

Michelle Obama gave a helluva performance tonight. Moved a lot of people to tears--or at least enough that the control room had more than one or two to pick out of the crowd. Me, I was moved to admiration--for her performance. Did it, as the pundits say, do the job? I don't know, because the job for me was done by Teddy Kennedy. He reminded me of why I'm a life-long Democrat. He made me feel proud to be one. Will that translate to my making up my mind for Obama? I dunno. I'll wait and see what the man himself has to say on Thursday night.

There is a hagiographic bent to the coverage of Obama, of that there is no question. Chris Matthews and Keith Oberwhatever were absolutely creaming their drawers over the whole Michelle Obama package. It was a little embarrassing; like watching two grown men have a wet dream in public. It will be interesting to see how their journalistic integrity reasserts itself when the Republican convention begins.

I AM SO SICK OF ALL THIS TALK ABOUT CLINTON's SUPPORTERS. Like they're accolytes in the convent of Hillary. Bull twaddle. Here's how to really screw women to the wall: set them against each other for imagined slights. Insist that they are operating on emotion, rather than reason. Demean their beliefs by refusing to acknowledge their right to those beliefs. Ask them if they're PMSing. Wonder if they have the balls to have balls. And then when they do, attack them for it.

Is it any wonder I get cranky when I'm exposed to "alleged" political coverage? And yet, I can't seem to stay away.

A Confidential Confession

Of course, I know I'm the only person to feel this way: I love Michael Phelps. I also love Dara Torres. I love that they are superhuman and yet seemingly supernormal. I could never do what they each have done, but the fact that they've done it makes in some way and for some reason my world a better place.

I think it's the integrity of their intention that I admire. And somehow that gets placed for me alongside the Chinese in these 2008 Olympics . The Chinese, while producing some amazing results both in events and the show itself, do not have integrity of intention. Theirs is more the win at whatever cost that I normally associate with The American Way.

Funny that, isn't it. Sad, too.

My Olympics

...is purely a spectator sport. I watch, I don't know why I watch, I don't know why I'm so fascinated that I will do nothing for that two week period in the evening but watch the Olympic coverage. I know nothing about sports--any of them, really. What I do know, however, is that I could never be a contender. I don't have the mental wherewithal, never mind what my body would do. Actually, I've been told over the years by a number of independent voices that I do have an athlete's body. My father was a professional athlete, and I guess I inherited something from him. The body type, that is, but certainly not the mental goods to go along with it. The repetition that is the hallmark of a training regime--I could never do that. I would get bored; I would whine; I would come up with a million and one reasons why I couldn't train that day. I don't know how the world-class athletes can bear the sheer tedium of swimming laps again and again and again and then again. Or marathon running: that training schedule of endlessly plowing up hills and down hills, around the block and into the countryside. I understand the mentality that goes into that about as well as I understand Chinese, which is to say not at all.

In the '80s, I did a profile of Mary T. Meagher, the famous Madame Butterfly, who still, I believe, holds the Olympic record for the 200 'fly. As part of the profile, I went to training with her one day. Oh, god, the absolute tedium of it. On the blocks, into the water, 'fly the length, haul body out of the water, walk around to the blocks and get in line to do it all over again. And again. And again. All afternoon and well into the evening. I escaped about 8 p.m., and Mary T. was still at it.

You know, it just occurred to me that I probably could learn Chinese sooner than I will ever understand how these athletes do it. Maybe that's why I watch them incessantly even though I haven't a clue what they're doing. To try to get some glimmer of what it is that drives them--and doesn't drive me.