If I had been twenty years old in 1968, instead of ten, I would have been against the war in Vietnam, but I can't imagine that I would have marched and chanted, "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Partly I don't like chants or slogans--too liturgical--and partly (this is a little hard to admit) I probably would have been embarrassed by some of the other marchers, who I think I might have regarded as mentally infirm, reflexive malcontents who on another day would be marching against something else, maybe the consumption of raw milk.
I thought of this the other night when, watching in bed the Democratic National Convention, Amanda walked in, glanced at the screen, and asked dismissively, "You like watching this?" She's a Democrat, and, perhaps to account for her dismissiveness, she launched into a fake speech in which she expertly deployed all the set phrases, the predictable pablum, the Main-Street-this and Wall-Street-that, concluding, if I remember correctly, with a sentence in which the phrase "middle class" occurred four or five times, always pronounced by her with mocking reverential awe.
Around five minutes before this performance, while I was watching alone as the picture kept shifting from the current speaker to some goofily-dressed delegate all weepy over words that my wife was soon to lampoon, I remember having the distinct thought: I wouldn't have much to say to that person, [s]he's embarrassing. Too much like the marching chanters I can't throw in with.
All of which is prologue for what some blogs call "the quote of the day." Asked by an interviewer whether he had watched any of the Republican convention on television, writer T.C. Boyle replied:
No, I didn't see a single second of it. Give me baseball for drama any day. To my mind, people who obsess over politicians--especially the smarmy, slimy types who pop up every four years to peddle their snake-oil promises--are very nearly on a level with those who obsess over the doings of movie stars and rockers, or even writers, for that matter.
Yes, but. Bill Clinton might qualify as "smarmy" or even "slimy" but wasn't that a fine speech he gave? One side is worse than the other. Joe Biden can be kind of a clown but it seems that all the individual members of the Republican party are vying with one another to be the subject of a Daily Show smack-down. To Clinton's summary of the Republican case for voting out Obama--
We made a big mess. He's taking too long to clean it up. So put us back in charge.
--Obama added last night his own version of the Republican economic plan, in toto:
Running a surplus? Need a tax cut. A deficit? Try another. Feel a cold coming on? Take two tax cuts, roll back some regulations and call us in the morning.
I admit I think that's pretty good TV.
