Five representatives of InTheFray Magazine will be among the 15,000 members of the media covering the Democratic National Convention. Not to be left out of the blog-o-rama, ITF Publisher Victor Chen, Managing Editor Henry Belanger, Contributing Editor Dustin Ross, and contributing writers Scott Winship and Ayah-Victoria McKhail will be posting all week in nearly-real-time from the bowels of the Fleet Center in Boston.

Crowd stands for official photograph of DNC 2004

Dustin Ross

These photos were taken at the Democratic National Convention on July 26, 2004, by ITF Contributing Editor Dustin Ross.

Bill & Hillary Clinton

Delegate

Jimmy Carter

Crowd honors 9/11

Watching Alston speak

Handing out signs

National Anthem

Delegates celebrate

Outside the perimeter, protester gets interviewed

Dustin Ross

I know last night was supposed to be about defining John Kerry and “The Kerry-Edwards Plan for America’s Future.” But what struck me most about last night (other than its unintended persuasiveness as an argument against the 22nd Amendment) was its quietly effective promotion of Everyday People. The Sly and the Family Stone song was there of course – with waaay too many other kumbaya ‘60s tunes — but the theme ran through the evening in a number of other ways.

There were the live feeds of Democrats from various electorally important states, often featuring one citizen’s case for John Kerry. These testimonials were clearly unscripted and often awkward. The men and women selected were generally as inarticulate as, say, me. Once they finished, the camera panned back to reveal a room full of people who didn’t really know how the hell they were supposed to react. The effect was as if the neighbors had been made to gather together to pose for someone’s brand new webcam.  

Also awkward, if highly energizing, was the testimonial of Reverend David Alston, Kerry’s shipmate in Vietnam. Clearly as uncomfortable as, say, I would be speaking before a national audience, Alston delivered his still-forceful speech without pausing for the audience’s repeated applause. We were left to decide whether to submit to the ecstatic atmosphere in the build-up to the Clintons or to pipe down and hear what the man had to say.

Still, if I’m Joe Undecided from Ohio watching all of this on TV, I think I could relate to these folks, and I think I’d appreciate their presence and the respect shown them at the convention. Cambridge, Massachusetts is embarrassingly far from my blue-collar roots in small-town Maine, but I’m not so disconnected from my roots that I couldn’t see my old neighbors reflected in the faces from Little Rock and Milwaukee on the screen. To my mind, letting these everyday people speak for themselves is far more effective than any people-versus-the-powerful speech could have been.

Delegate

Delegate

Watching Alston speak

In The Fray Contributor

Since party conventions are no longer about nominating candidates, what are they about? Mostly free stuff. And celebrities. On Saturday night, The Boston Globe sponsored a media party in the new Convention Center on the Boston waterfront. Besides a bizarre entertainment lineup that included Larry Watson (a performer who combines the fashion sense of Sinbad, circa 1993, and the flair of Sexual Chocolate’s Randy Watson) and Little Richard, there was a Ferris wheel, a chocolate fountain, and all the free booze you could handle. On the way out, media members were treated to DNC tote bags stuffed with schwag that ranged from the predictable (a reporter’s notebook), to the curious (a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese shaped like donkeys and stars), to the inexplicable (National Auto Dealers Association used car guide).

The politicians notwithstanding (nor the Mac & Cheese), the biggest thrill of the Convention has to be the celebrity spotting. On a reportorial excursion to the luxury boxes, I saw Andre 3000 talking to U.S. Congressman Kendrick B. Meek of Florida. Not surprisingly, the politician was doing all the talking. Andre may have been conspicuous, what with the cravat and all, but among the old-timers and high-rollers in the executive suites, he went practically unnoticed.

Andre 3000, musician from the rap group Outkast

Watching Michael Moore in the Fleet Center hallway

henrypb

For all the references to military service that we’ll hear this week in Boston (did you know James Carville was a marine?), the most remarkable reference to Vietnam in my book was this one from former President Clinton:

“During the Vietnam War, many young men — including the current President, the Vice President and me — could have gone to Vietnam but didn’t. John Kerry came from a privileged background and could have avoided it too. Instead he said, ‘send me.’”

Talk about boomer guilt! Still, the self-criticism made the point that much more powerful. Kerry certainly could have avoided the war if he had wanted to. The contrast between the paths that he and the current President chose clearly favors the Democrats. Now if only Kerry could convince active soldiers and their families that they should support his positions on defense. Hopefully, the campaign is making this a goal of the next few days.

Bill Clinton

Jim Wark, a Vietnam Vet (‘68-‘69) from Texas

In The Fray Contributor

There’s hardly a bad seat in the Fleet Center, even if I did feel like I was sitting close enough to touch the hundreds of balloons attached to the ceiling that will drop on Thursday. (Did I just spoil a surprise?) Perhaps I was sitting in the mysterious blogosphere? Anyway, one game I played while lesser-known speakers were at the podium was to try to figure out who was occupying CNN’s set, which was arranged on the convention floor below. To get a sense of the size of the place, here are a few of my guesses as to Larry King’s guests, accompanied by their actual identities as confirmed by the transcript:
    
    My guess: Britney Spears
    Actually: Vanessa Kerry
    
    My guess: Natalie Portman
    Actually: Alexandra Kerry
    
    My guess: Rudy Giuliani
    Actually: ex-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (for whom I worked as an intern one summer)
    

Cheese head and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer

Protesters outside the Fleet Center

In The Fray Contributor

Bloggers are getting a lot of attention from the mainstream press this week, but attention and respect are two different things. Inside the Fleet Center, it’s clear that they’re still at the bottom of media pecking order. On day one of the convention, expecting to find rows and rows of double-wide chairs filled with double-wide bloggers, hunched over laptops and chugging Diet Coke (“my fellow nerds and I will retire to our nerdery…”), I ascended the escalators and followed signs for Bloggers Boulevard. I kept ascending. And ascending, and ascending, and ascending. Turns out Bloggers Boulevard is just a clever euphemism for The Nosebleeds.

Delegates from New York

Onlookers

henrypb

Republican media manipulators effectively have dealt two hits to the Democratic image, just before and during this week’s convention in Boston, where the Johns have gone to “announce” their candidacy.

First came the news, days before the release of the long-awaited September 11 commission report, that Sandy Berger took commission documents that he shouldn’t have. The Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe quickly filed a Freedom of Information Act request that emphasized the lack of timeliness of the revelation; he posed the idea that Mr. Berger’s removal of documents had been known for months but stored up for a more opportune moment to make it public.

Then just yesterday, the Boston Herald reported that Teresa Heinz Kerry had called Ted Kennedy “a perfect bastard” in the mid-1970s. At the time, Mrs. Kerry was Mrs. Heinz, married to her first husband who was a Republican senator. Senator Kennedy’s office says that he and Mrs. Kerry, over the years, had developed a “deep friendship.” A lot can change in nearly three decades.

There’s nothing like trying to manipulate the media and nothing better than a public that can recognize it.

Vinnee Tong

The latest installment of despotism and insanity has been revealed in a poem: “The New Turkmen Spirit.”

The poem, written by President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan and presented to his nation, begins with conceit and crescendos to a tone of authoritarian caution. The poem opens with the declaration that “I am the Turkmen spirit, reborn to bring you a golden age,” and includes the unambiguous and ominous warning: “My sight is sharp – I see everything … If you are honest in your deeds, I see this; if you commit wrongdoing, I see that too.” The spirit of Stalin is alive and well, it seems, in President Niyazov.

President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan — a Central Asian nation sandwiched in the region between Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, and which sits on the fifth largest reserves of natural gas in the world — is well-known for his hubris and his tyranny. Since he became president of the republic in 1991, President Niyazov has renamed some months of the year after himself, inscribed words from his own book next to verses of the Qur’an on a mosque, and has imprisoned over 40 opposition activists since November of 2002.

Given that Robert Templer, the Central Asia Division Director of the International Crisis Group, warned in March of 2003 that Turkmenistan could “become the next Afghanistan … and … a danger to the rest of the world,” we might do well to keep a wary eye on President Niyazov.

Mimi Hanaoka

Beheading, lethal injection, the firing squad, and being beaten to death by sweet-smelling wood (a method of dispatch reserved for royals) have been used variously as methods of execution in Thailand, but the same nagging question persists: Can the death penalty ever be humane?

Until January of 2004, when lethal injection was introduced as the official mode of execution, criminals in Thailand were executed by firing squad (and until the 1930s, they were beheaded). As part of this transition, the director of the Thai prison system sent prison officials to Texas on an educational trip to study the process of lethal injection. Nathee Chitsawang, Director General of Prisons, explained: “It is more humane than when we used the firing squad … With the old method, sometimes they were crying and shouting … and sometimes they did not die immediately, so we had to take them and shoot again.” Nathee Chitsawang’s statement should sustain a tired but crucial aspect of the debate about the death penalty — whether execution can ever be humane.

There are legal, social, and moral arguments made for the death penalty, and there are deeply rooted religious convictions that undergird concepts of just punishment, including the death penalty, in the American and British criminal justice systems. In his 1996 book “God’s Just Vengeance,” Timothy Gorringe dissected Western concepts of penal strategies and asserted that Christian theology has been and continues to be the powerful undercurrent that lies beneath the legal system. The question of the humanity of the death penalty, however, cuts across cultural barriers and the issue of racial inequity in the administration of capital punishment and applies to the issue in all regions.  
  
Amporn Birtling, one of the 883 inmates on death row in Thailand’s Bangkwang prison, will only receive two hours warning before he is executed.  He states: “I have no clue when I will die … they could inject me today or tomorrow.”

While his execution will no doubt be horrific, the waiting process has created a hell unto itself in the prison that is notoriously known as the “Bangkok Hilton.”

Mimi Hanaoka

Something happens when you break a world record. You cease to become a representative for your country, and you become a role model for the world.

This morning Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France for the sixth time. He is the only person in history to have won more than five. Moreover, he has won six consecutive Tours, after having been diagnosed with cancer eight years ago and given less than a 50 percent chance of survival.

Although many interpreted Lance’s stage win yesterday to mean that Armstrong had his sixth Tour victory already under his belt, Armstrong remained true to nature, humble and in the moment, remarking only that he wouldn’t anticipate a win until he crossed the finish line.

After his official win today, Armstrong reiterated the importance of not getting ahead of oneself and of taking each moment as it comes:

“The last laps there, I thought, ‘Ah, I want to get this over with … But then I thought to myself, ‘You know, you might want to do a few more laps, because you may not ever do it again.’ And you can’t take it for granted.”

The structure of the Tour de France ought to preclude nationalistic attitudes due to its three-week length, abundance of award opportunities, and race strategy. The American national anthem, which played this morning at the awards ceremony in Paris, served more as an homage to Armstrong’s beginnings than as a tally mark in a competition between nations. The cycling team led by Armstrong has been sponsored by the United States Postal Service and is composed of cyclists from several countries. To win the race, Armstrong and his teammates banded together, forging across France as a unit and lending each other strength and support in order to complete the 3,395-kilometer race.

There have been some resentments noted toward Armstrong, but his consistent efforts toward raising popular awareness of sports, the race to cure cancer and good sportsmanship are matched by a growing momentum of international supporters and admirers.

What do art and politics have to do with one another? Are celebrities any less worthy than anyone else when it comes to expressing political opinions?

Linda Ronstadt and the Aladdin. Whoopi Goldberg and Slim-Fast. Michael Moore and Disney. The Dixie Chicks and Clear Channel. Tim Robbins and the Baseball Hall of Fame.

An article on the First Amendment Center web site reveals that throughout history, celebrities of all political leanings have been dropped by the corporations which had sponsored them, although the current trend in the American media has been bashing celebrities who voice liberal views.

Some people believe art is only entertainment and escapism. Others believe art is a medium for a message. There are those who believe in the purity of aesthetic excellence. Still others believe that the more controversy stirred up over art through politics, the better art sells.

The latest episode, between singer Linda Ronstadt and the Las Vegas Aladdin Hotel and Casino, leads me to contemplate the First Amendment: the right to free speech in the United States. Perhaps the hotel-casino and the audience members who disagreed with Ronstadt’s opinion had the right to usher her out and to request refunds for the concert. Perhaps Ronstadt had the right to express her opinion during the concert. Certainly everyone should have been aware of the potential consequences for his or her actions.

The comedy inherent in this week’s situation results from the fact that the Aladdin Hotel and Casino will be taken over by Planet Hollywood International in the upcoming months. Hours after the news broke that current Aladdin president William Timmins had asked Ronstadt to leave and never return, Robert Earl, chief of Planet Hollywood International and prospective owner of the Aladdin, invited both Ronstadt and Michael Moore to return for a concert in the fall, after the Aladdin changes hands.

Sir Elton John has expressed the opinion that the current atmosphere in the United States is akin to 1950s McCarthyism. In an interview with the New York magazine, Interview, Sir Elton is quoted as remarking,

“There’s an atmosphere of fear in America right now that is deadly. Everyone is too career-conscious … There was a moment about a year ago when you couldn’t say a word about anything in this country for fear of your career being shot down by people saying you are un-American.”

Los Angeles-based writer Andrew Gumbel points out that perhaps these rebel celebrity headliners are less a manifestation of across-the-board censorship than they are of the extreme volatility present in the United States during an election year.