This post isn't really about the convention, it's about people writing about the convention. So I'm not violating by one-a-day rule. I can quit any time I want to, I tell you!!
Anyway, I see that Mitch Cohen's Thorn Papers blog picked up on some of the same Jimmy Carter quotes that I did. He also adds some good extras from a Carter interview afterward with Jim Lehrer.
When someone like Carter is expressing himself this strongly on a central foreign policy issue, it would be best if everyone could hear what he was saying without first filtering it through a thick screen of partisanship. But I'm only dreaming there.
There's been a lot of next-big-thing type hoopla about blog coverage of the convention. From what I've seen of the first day's sampling of it, I'm not impressed so far. Tom Tomorrow's account of walking around with Michael Moore is interesting because it's well-told and because I didn't realize Moore had become quite such a Big Celebrity and because of his tale of Moore's encounter with Bill "Shut up!" O'Reilly.
But mostly, the first-hand blogger coverage has struck me kind of the way in did Steve Gilliard in this grumpy assessment:
Why am I irritated? Because I read the National Journal and found out only bloggers have decent wi-fi access. And it took the BBC to report how veteran political reporter Walter Means was laughed out of the room whem he said he was objective. Uh guys, that's something I want to read about. And not in the BBC, either.
Gilliard also had this observation about the ridiculous arrangement for protesters, which looks like something the masterminds of Guantanamo and Abu Ghuraib came up with (which is more or less the case):
If you guys hadn't been so impressed with your entry passes, you might have noted the insanely dangerous conditions for protest. The Protest Prison as the sign there called it, is one scary place. It was barely filled when the answer crowd did their apologia for the Palestinians, without noting that even the Palestinians are sick of the corruption of PA. If there is a large crowd, and things get wacky, people will get hurt. Oh yeah, the cops are perfectly poised to drop tear gas in that small area, with two narrow egress and entry points. If something goes wrong, people will get hurt, maybe trampled or killed. It is the most dangerous setting I have ever seen for a protest. [ANSWER is an antiwar protest group that actually sees itself as "left" rather than "liberal," a distinction probably incomprehensible to Fox News fans.]
I was happy there wasn't a crowd there. Because the City of Boston was slick, they picked a place to limit protest and a place no delegate has to go to unless they want to. By setting up that pen, they limited protest better than a simple ban. By setting up a funnel to the protest prison they may have a secure area, they also have the potential for a bad riot.
AOL-J'er Armandt seems to think this arrangement is some kind of partisan Democratic scheme. Wrong. This is the way our new Homeland Security State treats protest. When Bush visited London the last time, the American security people demanded that the protesters be kept completely out of sight of our legitimate president. Even the Tony Blair's government couldn't quite go along with that.
The scene in New York next month at the Republican convention is likely to be more appalling.
2 comments:
with you all the way here, both about blogging the convention and about the protest pen. i commented on cherie's journal entry on this subject too. things have come to a sorry pass in the land of the free and the home of the brave when this is our approach to allowing protest of any kind. we have indeed succombed to terrorist threats when we give up the liberties upon which we were founded as a polity. i know teddy joked about it last night - but hey, no tea could get thrown in boston harbor nowadays, could it?
The "protest prison" is really pretty disgusting. Steve Gilliard has been commenting on this passionately but intelligently. One of his well-taken points is that a lot of what they have on the Boston streets is "security for show." One consequence of which is that there are a lot of cops standing around on streetcorners shooting the breeze with each other, making themselves a potential target for anyone who *did* want to do serious harm.
Another big concern is that along with local and state cops, there is also a noticeable presence of Army and National Guard. Regular troops don't normally receive the same kind of training cops do, and if shooting or explosions broke out, that has a potential for over-reaction.
That cage business is a terrible embarassment for Boston and the country. - Bruce
Post a Comment