Convention, Conshmention

I began a post earlier this week in the following manner:

"I feel the need to be blunt: I don't give a rat's ass about what Michelle Obama said at the Democratic convention yesterday."

There. I said it.

I wrote those words, not because I have anything in the least against Michelle Obama. Indeed, I know next to nothing about her and, frankly, don't care. This is because it's her husband who, if elected, is going to get intelligence estimates from the CIA and have to deal with Putin when tensions flare and tanks roll in the Caucasus.

I read about how coalition airstrikes recently killed 50 children (along with 45 more adult civilians) yet everywhere people were agog with excitement over Michelle Obama. She's lovely, she "nailed it", the Obamas are just like us, blah, blah, blah. It's amazing how otherwise smart, sober people get so incredibly wrapped up in a dog & pony show.

All this attention focused on heartwarming stories and platitudes obscures the fact that the sausage is being made right next door by big money and the politicos. Lobbyists and members of Congress get to whoop it up away from the gaze of the camera eye. (Two John Dos Passos puns in a row!) I don't care about the Obama family narrative; I want to know which Congressmen and Congresswomen are rubbing elbows with which lobbyists because that's how deals are made that affect which bills pass and which ones never make it out of committee. The warm fuzzies of Michelle Obama's story will fade soon enough, but the influence of lobbyists can have implications that will last decades.

So will all the Lefties out there please stop drooling over members of the ruling class telling you what you want to hear on the TV? As of yesterday evening, there had been precious little mention of the Bush administration's disregard for the rule of law and, quite frankly, it feels like 1992. Clinton did his populist shtick and what happened? NAFTA, deregulation, welfare reform, and Cruise missile sorties whenever Newt Gingrich and his arsewipe pals brought up Monica Lewinsky. And let's not forget that Clinton couldn't even donate some armored personnel carries to the U.N. to help save victims of the genocide in Rwanda. Despite Obama's nomination, there's still a hard row to hoe.

Still, it was a momentous week. Contrary to my fellow blogger Emily, Obama's nomination was more than forty five years in the making. Slavery ended in 1865 as did the Port Royal Experiment which proved to incredulous white people that blacks could, in fact, play the market game too. So that's 143 years, by my count.