Tuesday, July 27, 2004

Obama Speaks

C-Span has a video of the Barack Obama speech up on their website. There's a slightly better copy and the text on the Chicago Tribune website, though you have to register (it's free) to access it. This link will take most browsers directly to the speech, assuming they have Real Player installed. This link will take you to the page with the text and a link to the video.

• Posted at 8:46 PM · LINK

Thanks

To all those who wrote to tell me that Barack Obama was a great speaker and that I should watch him: You were right. I'll post a link to it when there is one.

• Posted at 7:12 PM · LINK

Me on the Web

The article I wrote for Variety about Comic-Con International can be read online here. Contrary to its byline, I am not on the Variety staff.

• Posted at 4:48 PM · LINK

Another Convention Report That Mentions Me

Ian Brill talks about what he did in San Diego.

• Posted at 4:38 PM · LINK

Currently on C-Span...

Democrat delegates dancing in the aisles to "Johnny B. Goode." Why do we need to see this?

• Posted at 4:08 PM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

My cleaning lady missed it so I just showed her Bill Clinton's speech last night at the Democratic Convention. I liked it more the second time, though I still don't quite understand one line...

Tonight my friends, I ask you to join me for the next 100 days in telling John Kerry's story and promoting his plans. Let every person in this hall and all across America say to him what he has always said to America: Send Me.

Doesn't that passage contain a little of what that eminent authority, Daffy Duck, once described as Pronoun Trouble? I think what the former president meant to say was more like this...

Tonight my friends, I ask you to join me for the next 100 days in telling John Kerry's story and promoting his plans. Let every person in this hall and all across America take him up on his generous and brave offer, "Send Me!"

But despite that, I liked the speech more this time. And it struck me for months now, we've been hearing that Hillary had this secret plan to swoop down and snatch the presidential nomination (and later, the vice-presidential nomination) or that she and Bill were plotting to sabotage Kerry so that he wouldn't be running for a second term in '08 when she plans to run for president. One reader of this weblog has sent me dozens of Hillary-related conspiracy theories...and I don't see any evidence that any of these alleged plans were ever put into play.

I hope the Democrats send Bill Clinton out to give as many speeches for Kerry as he has in him. He's a much more interesting speaker than anyone else we're likely to hear in this election. Even Bush supporters seem to be urging everyone to look past their guy's obvious discomfort with the English language. Earlier on MSNBC, I heard someone try to spin that as a positive, the idea being that his inability to give a polished speech proves that he's a "regular guy." I don't fault anyone for being born into wealth and privilege — this year, I'll probably vote for someone who was — but let's not get any more ridiculous than absolutely necessary.

(Here's a link to the text of Clinton's speech and a non-C-Span video version.)

• Posted at 3:27 PM · LINK

Con Report

Here's a report on the Comic-Con International by Randy Lander. And yes, I've decided to only link to coverage that mentions at least one of my panels.

• Posted at 3:06 PM · LINK

I Don't Need No Steenkin' Badges

One odd thing that happens to me at comic book conventions is that I mysteriously lose my ability to recognize people. Even when I encounter someone I've known for twenty-plus years, I find myself staring at their badge to double-check who they are.

I think it's connected to a telephone habit of mine which can best be described by example. I'm calling my friend Joe who recently divorced a lady named Susan and married a lady named Betty. (This is a hypothetical case.) As I'm dialing, I remind myself that if a lady answers, I should address her as Betty, not as Susan. Then a lady answers and I suddenly think to myself, "Wait! Do I have them reversed?" And I start stammering, "H-hello...uh..." because I am momentarily afraid to address Betty as Betty, even though I know her name is Betty.

At a non-convention gathering, I have very little trouble recognizing and greeting people by name. At a convention though, dozens and dozens of folks I barely know say howdy to me and I start getting them confused with those I do know. Someone says, "Hi, Mark," and as an involuntary reflex, I instantly think, "Is this someone I'm supposed to know?" and my eyes make a desperate grab for their badge...even if the person is among my best friends. If, as occasionally happens, they're wearing a badge with someone else's name on it, I either address them as somebody else or freeze up because I sense something is amiss. This year in San Diego, a lot of people were wearing badges that were not clipped-on or pinned but were instead on a little lanyard around their necks. This made it easy for the badge to be backwards and, just my luck, about 85% of them were. That really throws me off.

All this is my way of apologizing to you if you were one of many people I ran into and immediately looked at your badge. I may or may not have recognized your lovely face but if I did, that rarely stopped me from eyeing the badge, just to make 100% certain before I spoke that the name in my head matched the person before me. It's not personal. It's just what conventions do to me.

• Posted at 12:57 PM · LINK

Tonight's Convention Coverage

Several folks have written to suggest I catch tonight's speech by Senate candidate Barack Obama...so I will.

• Posted at 11:00 AM · LINK

Today's Political Rant

Watching as much of the Democratic Convention as I could stand, I found myself longing for the days when conventions involved at least a smidgen of suspense. You still had all those boring speeches where the speakers said — over and over in increasingly less colorful manner — what everyone in the hall wanted to hear. But at least you had cutaways to a bigger story about who'd get the nomination(s) or what kind of floor fights were looming. Alas, in '68 and even more in '72, America looked at the Democratic gathering, got the idea that those guys couldn't run their own convention (let alone, the country) and moved towards the G.O.P. That led to the notion that conventions had to be rigidly stage-managed and all the battles settled before they began. In 1972, you also had the embarrassment of a vice-presidential pick who had not been properly vetted. After Tom Eagleton, presidential candidates knew that they had to select their running mates well in advance and after exhaustive research...so that part of the conventions was prearranged, as well. Which left us with just the boring speeches.

Most were pretty tedious tonight, hitting all the talking points but not accomplishing much beyond that. Jimmy Carter said some pretty scathing things about George W. Bush but did so in such a bland monotone that he failed to excite a convention hall full of people obsessed with seeing Bush defeated. Al Gore was better...but the trouble with Al Gore is that he's Al Gore. No matter what he talks about, you can never get far from the fact that this guy got more votes and was only denied the White House on questionable grounds.

I kept waiting for Bill Clinton to come out and show everyone how it's done. While he easily had the best speech of the night, he failed to do more than articulate the shortcomings of the Republican party. The case for John Kerry, which I keep waiting to hear, never got much deeper than that he's a helluva guy, a war hero...and he isn't George W. Bush. That's enough for much of America, maybe even most of America...but I'm not sure it's enough for an electoral majority.

Don't think I'm going to watch tomorrow night, except maybe for Ron Reagan's speech. Then on Wednesday, I'll watch John Edwards who, I'm guessing, will tell us that John Kerry is a helluva guy, a war hero and that he's not George W. Bush. Thursday, I'll watch Kerry and maybe Max Cleland. (Here's the schedule.) If you're interested in any of these and miss them on TV, C-Span has online clips available for a while. So far, only Bill Clinton is worth the effort.

• Posted at 4:34 AM · LINK