The Weekly Meat

Bush's Top 10

As President, George W. Bush has pulled far more idiocy than should be constitutionally allowed. Picking his top ten gaffes is like picking Johnny Cash's 10 best songs — which is to say time consuming and tedious, yet hugely entertaining at the same time.

Some day, years from now, we'll reflect back on his presidency, laugh nervously, and quickly change the subject. Until then, let's have a look at what The Dauphin had to offer us:

10. I was just, uh, watchin playoff football. And, uh, I fell. See, I forgot to chew ma pretzels well enough. Choked on em. Passed out. Fell down, hit ma face.

[Note: Call me cynical and a tad conspiratorial, if you must, but surely there are others not wearing a tinfoil hat who would agree that Bush's pretzel logic a tetch fuzzy, and that perhaps the untimely meeting of his face with the floor was caused by his fall off a certain wagon.]

9. Oh George, will you ever stop falling? First, the pretzel incident, and then (silly George), you tried to ride a Segway (self-balancing, mind you) — with predictable results.

8. Oh, such a pensive photo op from Air Force One — the magnanimous and empathetic President finally cutting short his vacation to fly high above the devastation of Hurricane Katrina (see #3)....

7. There are certain things that one could do to make oneself look achingly unpresidential. Monica Lewinsky in a White House alcove would be one. Dancing like Elaine on Seinfeld would be another. No video of Clinton and Monica, of course, but here's George doing his best white man's overbite.

6. "Yo, Blair!" Oh, G8 summit conference, how do I love thy comic genius? Your open microphones, featuring sophomoric fraternization between smug, foppish dolts, Bush stuffing his piehole with rolls and butter.... So good.

5. It's gotta be the shoes. It generally takes more than the standard amount of loathing to make a grown man throw a pair of shoes at anyone — let alone a sitting president. But if there's one area in which Bush excels, it's his ability to inspire more than the standard amount of loathing. Admittedly, Bush showed better than average presidential agility in managing to duck both shoes (very well thrown, by the way). I dunno about Clinton or Reagan, but I'm fairly certain Bush Sr., along with Nixon, Ford, and Carter would have taken those wingtips right in the mush.

4. Bush gives German Chancellor (German Chancellor, mind you, not German whorish page to the undersecretary of the Chancellor) Andrea Merkel a creepy, smirking, unsolicited back rub at the G8 summit.

3. Katrina. Three words: colossal fuck up. GWB: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." They didn't? Not even, say, a couple years earlier? George? GWB: "Heckuva job, Brownie." And may the 9th ward be in the White House, listening to Chocolate City, when a category fiver strikes Kennebunkport, Maine. And may you be trapped in the attic with an axe.

2. 9/11/01. In the days following the 9/11 attacks, let's agree that Bush was presidential, empathetic, rallying, and basically fine. But facing the eye of the shitstorm, he was a deer in the headlights. For seven painful, s l o w, minutes.

1. Two words: Mission Accomplished. Number one with a bullet. Because sometimes pictures do tell the story. And this single image continues to be the most glaring evidence to the fact that the Bush administration was grossly shortsighted and criminally negligent in their planning for, execution, and analysis of the Iraq war — the vital statistics of which can and should be seen here.

I've been waiting for the end of this era since before it even began. You're a pox and an embarrassment, Mr. Bush. May the White House door hit you in the ass on the way out.

Change

The mainstream media has a knack for painting issues with a broad brush, and occasionally with their fingers. And their dumbed-down questions lately of "Where's the change?" grossly oversimplify what president-elect Barack Obama will indeed bring to Washington.

Yes, Obama's Cabinet will consist largely of faces we've all seen before: Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Rahm Emanuel, and so on. But lasting change often has less to do with Washington "insiders" and "outsiders" per se than it does with the way in which business is conducted.

Policy aside, the approach of the George W. Bush administration was brash, rash, and hugely partisan. Bush was the self-proclaimed "Decider" who felt things in his gut rather than weighing them with his intellect. He was a self-consciously–presented blustery cowboy — all "Dead or alive" and "Bring it on." He was isolationist, secretive, and subversive in his attempts to grab power on the world stage, within the U.S., and specifically among the three branches of government. He thumbed his nose at the media (whose "filtered" newspapers he did not even deign to read), and was almost never humble, almost never contrite.

Appearances and tone count for a lot in terms of public opinion, and from what we have seen and heard so far, the Obama administration will be far more transparent and open, far more based in truthfulness than truthiness, far more persuasive yet far more willing to compromise. Time will tell, but it certainly appears that as president, Barack Obama will actually listen to the other side, listen to public opinion, listen to science. And after George Bush, the ability to listen at all is a great change.

Not to get all "team of rivals" about this, but it has been some time since we've had a president assemble a Cabinet unbounded by party lines and that will present a studied, informed view of events and crises to aid in the decisions which will help shape our world. Bush surrounded himself largely with yes men and women whose primary and sometimes only purpose seemed to be that of sheltering Himself from opinions other than his own.

Arguably, the transition from Clinton to Bush was far more drastic than the current transition. But the political whiplash and public uproar caused by Bush 2000 (after an election in which he, in fact, lost the popular vote) had to do with adviser Karl Rove's strategy of playing to an über-narrow base, repaying campaign debts, upholding strict party doctrine, and looking toward reelection. Barack Obama appears to be a far more unifying and skilled politician, and his Cabinet choices alone have shown his lack of servitude toward a far-left agenda. So one would hope that his brand of change (and it certainly is a brand) is a more lasting one.

I am not talking about immediate partisan change, nor gradual demographic changes favoring the left, nor even change in the Clintonian sense (George Clinton, that is — because "You're my piece of the rock, and I love you, CC"). Rather, I'm talking about a shift in national thinking and, hopefully, even the way in which it is presented. Not to sound cornpone, but a shift from the divisive red state/blue state map we all know to a more subtly shaded one in which there does exist a broad and surprisingly solid middle ground.

Sure, the change will start with the transfer of ruling party power, and yes, Barack Obama looks a bit different from all 43 of his predecessors — but from there, the subtleties take over, and the difference in people, in culture, and in the processes that help run the country have a good chance of seeping into public discourse and indeed into each of us, as we push back against the constructionist notions of who liberals are and who conservatives are. I am a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, but I vote the issues and I lean toward the middle on many of them, and I am utterly exhausted by the purported and perpetuated polarization of our two main parties. Again, the mainstream media, spoon-feeding us with their blunt shovels.

Exhibit A, the Sunday morning talk shows. The shrill voices they present us with, from the far left and far right do not help. Because "Jane, you ignorant slut" does not move along debate. Hearing varying opinions on how to best meet in the middle does. We need more centrist talking heads who not only can talk, but also listen to each other. So instead of letting say, Katha Pollitt and Bill Kristol smirk and jab at each other, what say we let Fareed Zakaria and Andrew Sullivan make some actual progress? We might find that we agree, welcome, and can build on their more centrist take on the issues.

Obama has consistently run on a platform of change, progress, and inclusiveness. I consider myself careful when offered to swig the rhetorical Kool-Aid, but I do believe substantive change is coming. It has been percolating for long enough that it cannot be stopped. And Barack Obama is the right guy in the right place at the right time to be an outstanding steward in leading our country in the direction it inherently wants to go.

Ed Snider Hearts Sarah Palin

I know I said I'd cool it on the politics for awhile, but then someone makes a decision to mess directly with my first love. And so:

In the 40 years my family has held Philadelphia Flyers’ season tickets, I can only once remember politics entering the arena of play. That was January 11, 1976, when the Soviet Red Army team came to town, and my mom and I and 17,000 of our friends went down to the Spectrum to collectively say, “Not in our country. And certainly not in our house.” It was the Cold War; we were united that day. The Flyers won the game, and with it, the respect of the league.

Now they risk losing the same, as Flyers’ owner Ed Snider waves a bright red flag of another kind, invoking politics in our house and inviting Republican VP nominee and “hockey mom” Sarah Palin to drop the puck at Saturday’s Flyers-Rangers tilt — bringing public scorn and ridicule to what is otherwise one of the classiest organizations in all of sport.

Shame on you, Mr. Snider. Your childish, bald-faced pandering during this bitterly divisive election may play well to your Republican base, but it will not to that of your Flyers.

We’ve seen the pictures of you palling around with Governor Palin during her last Philly visit, and that’s fine. We don’t begrudge you or any other public figure their political beliefs. But do not shove them down our throat.

Admittedly, I happen to disagree pretty strongly with Sarah Palin's political views. But this is not a question of partisanship, it is about you horning politics of any shade into our world of leisure and escape — a privilege, by the way, for which we pay you handsomely. Not only through ticket sales, but through our Comcast premiums.

Forty years ago, I was born into the Flyers community, and into a love for hockey that continues to this day. Flyers’ games, and the Spectrum in particular, were arguably the spiritual temple of my youth — and like the globally respected notion that war must not enter places of worship, we fans should be able to check our politics at the arena door.

I won't be at the game on Saturday, but my folks will. They won’t boo, because they'd argue that Governor Palin doesn’t deserve name calling and the sort of spleen that my family generally reserves for, say, the Rangers. Their 20,000 friends, of course, will be another story.

So there you have it, Ed. You want to trot out your show pony to start off the season? May you both reap all that you have sown.

Bipartisan Bingo: VP Debate Edition

Be sure to print out your set of VP debate edition bipartisan bingo cards, folks.

The Sarah Palin Dictionary

Sure, it feels a tetch like piling on, when even the righties are calling for her head, but hell, John McCain continues to claim good judgment in these trying times, and so I must continue to dispute his claim. Still, I hope for this to be the last bit of politics on The Meat for a while. Perhaps best now to just sit back and watch while that creaky, titanic old ship tries with increasing despair to avoid the looming iceberg.

The following palincyclopedic primer ought to help us through the VP debate and beyond. And yes, by all means, please contribute additional entries in the Comments field, and I'll append this post as necessary.

Alaska — 1. Giant non-contiguous red state northwest of Canada. 2. Repository for earmarks and big oil money over which Herself lords and Putin's head rears.

also — The first and last word of most Palin sentences also. Excepting, of course, those that end with "You betcha."

doggone it — Studied homespun folksiness with which Herself loves to pepper her speech. Verdict: That dog don't hunt.

earmarks — 1. To designate/gift funds to a pet project or state that could not exist without them. 2. Visible scarring caused about the otic lobe by mating Palins.

Head of Skate — "Really bad Disney movie" starring Herself as a hockey mom.

hockey mom — A group (of purported lipstick-wearers [though generally not in the author's experience]) to which Herself desperately wants to belong, though the hockey moms no longer want her kind.

lipstick — A waxy, pigmented cosmetic worn on the lips by pigs and purportedly by hockey moms (though generally not in the author's experience).

Maverick — A rear-wheel drive gas-guzzling compact that gained some notoriety back during the era of the Vietnam War.

moose stew — Purportedly Herself's favorite meal. See also faux populist back-story.

nucular — "Folksy" nuclear pronunciation favored by Herself and by George W. Bush. Coincidence, or cause for (even greater) concern?

palbatross — Something that causes persistent deep concern or anxiety. See John McCain, health of.

palgebra — The fuzzy math used by Herself while making grandiose claims about her experience and, say, the U.S. domestic energy supply.

palienation — A withdrawing or separation of voters' affections from Herself.

palimeano — A journalist (or just Joe Six-Pack) who asks a "gotcha" question.  [Entry submitted by TWM reader JayDenver]

palimitator — Tina Fey.

palimmolation — The act of Herself sacrificing at the altar of public/media scrutiny beyond her RNC acceptance speech.

palimprovisation — Unflattering and painful stammering and generalities that occur when journalists ask questions that demand knowledge of the issues. See also deer moose in headlights.

palinability — The lack of sufficient capability to be Vice President. See also Quayle, J. Danforth.

palinanity — Lack of substance; vapid, pointless, or fatuous character.

palinauguration — Please, God, no.

palincantation — A written or recited formula of words designed to produce a particular effect. See also "I told them 'Thanks but no thanks' on that bridge to nowhere."

palinception — The commencement of human life that happens when Palins mate. Often results in names including but not limited to Bristol, Piper, Track, Willow, and Trig.

palincinerator — See Couric, Katie.

palindigestion — What Herself causes John McCain when she answers voters' questions on camera while palandering for votes.

palindrone — Empty gibberish that when spoken by a smiling, chipper Palin sounds the same backwards as it does forwards.

palinertia — A property of matter by which Herself remains in free-fall unless acted upon by some external force.

Palinese — The native language of Herself. Somewhere between English and utter horse hockey.

palinference — Faulty syllogism.  [Entry submitted by long-time TWM reader Milena]

palingenesis — 1. Political reinvention on a national level. 2. Embryonic development that reproduces the ancestral features of the Palin family (opposed to cheneygenesis). 3. Baptism in the evangelical faith.

palingual — Having the ability to speak both Palinese and English.

palinmony — The allowance the Palins attempted to levy against their former brother-in-law in the form of his forced dismissal as a state trooper. See also troopergate.

palinoscopy — A nationally televised procedure involving Katie Couric. Somewhat uncomfortable for the subject, and perversely entertaining/educational for the audience.

palinterest — Waning fast.

palinthropy — A philanthropic act or gift to one's Alaskan constituents. See also earmarks.

palintine — A feudal lord seeking sovereign power over her domains.

Palintino — A font family used for both text and display type. Its letters have a shapely enough body, but include expensive and overly-showy serifs.

palintology — "The [disturbing] study of [Herself] and how she sees the world."

palintoxication — The stupefying effect Herself has on "fair and balanced" Fox News anchors despite her palincompetence.

palintriloquism — The magical art of political ventriloquism. Boy, when they're really on their game, you can barely see McCain's mouth move when Palin speaks.  [Entry submitted by TWM reader JayDenver]

palioclimatology — The anti-science of claiming that humans are in no way responsible for climate change.

paliolithic age — 44, or roughly half that of John McCain.

pall — vb. To become pale; to lose strength or effectiveness when asked substantive questions. n. Something that covers or conceals the issues.

pallbearer — A handler who manages Herself in an attempt to keep her from speaking.

pallinative care — Medical treatment that aims to alleviate or reduce the suffering caused by Herself.

pallinator — An agent that pollinates Palins.

Paltoids™ — Something you take to freshen your breath but that ends up stinging your mouth, making you wish you could spit it out politely.  [Entry submitted by long-time TWM reader Sanjuro]

Palzheimer's disease — A degenerative disease of the central nervous system characterized esp. by the forgetfulness of inconvenient facts (or even convenient ones).

ta — Used as a function word to express motion or indicate direction toward, as in "Please, just send me back ta Wasilla."  [Entry submitted by TWM reader ItWasAFumble]

vindication — What herself claimed to feel after the Troopergate verdict, despite the findings of the court.

Wasilla — Herself's often-invoked hometown. She paints a folksy picture, but it's palinhospitable to the objective eye.

Bipartisan Bingo

This one's interactive. But don't worry, it demands only partial attention, and can be completed while drinking. Click the image below to print out your own Bipartisan Bingo cards, just in time for the debates. Then tune in this Friday night, 9:00 EST, watch closely, and mark the generalizations and platitudes as you hear them. First one to BINGO wins a Caribou Barbie Sarah Palin bobblehead!*

*Not actually true. (Alas, the expected bobblehead earmarks have since been diverted to Alaska.)

Lies! Lies! Lies!

"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."  —Mark Twain

I'd love to be writing about more pressing issues of national interest right now, like the impending onset of hockey season, but our time of national division decision is upon us. And so this week I find myself unable to steer clear of this: Their views aside, John McCain's and Sarah Palin's performances at the GOP Convention won them the undisputed title of being the most egregiously full of shit candidates since- since- OK, it has only been since George W. Bush and Dick Cheney donned hip boots to wade through their own muck back in 2000 (and 2004). But still.

Whether selling us their protestations over a "bridge to nowhere," claims of an earmark-free past, or their feigned offense over "lipstick on a pig," the noxious two-stroke engine powering the McCain-Palin ticket runs on the oil of falsehood — and their only answer to criticism seems to be, "Drill baby drill!" 

Clearly, lying is nothing new — nor is it exclusive to one political party — but the unwinking, un–self-conscious level of their two-facedness is staggering and on the scale of the old Iraqi information minister, who (bless you, YouTube) in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary, continued to claim, "There are no American infidels in Baghdad." There was an absurd comedy to "Baghdad Bob's" pressers, but the act became old when, back home, Baghdad Bush started slinging the same hash. And now, McCain is giving Bush a run for his money. It's gotten so bad that the heretofore king of snake oil, Karl Rove — now a (nudge nudge) "fair and balanced" Newsweek columnist — thinks McCain has gone too far. That's saying something.

What's next? Fox news arguing some of McCain's "facts"? I'll try to tamp down my hopes....

I applaud some in the media for noticing the lying, but their arguably objective reporting still hasn't received the traction it should. And it's a pathetic state of affairs when a self-proclaimed "fake-news" show has become the de facto source to call out hypocrisy (on both sides of the aisle). But god bless Jon Stewart and what must be legions of interns for sifting through and cataloging the endless hours of C-Span and such to find our politicos' most incriminating, often empty, clips.

And shame on all of us who are unthinking enough to choke down the buckets of pig slop those candidates are serving up. The George Orwell we read back in school should have taught us better than that. (My god, the past eight years should have taught us better.) But McCain and Bush and company seem to feel that if they and their minions can just keep repeating the same information, they can will it to be true, as in 1984: "We are at war with Eastasia. We've always been at war with Eastasia."

And then there is the VP choice. Well, the Palindrone (definition: empty gibberish that when spoken by a smiling Sarah Palin sounds the same backwards as it does forwards) effect is intoxicating to those who think the country will run best on her sass and his fire, without regard to the issues.

If those two do happen to steal this election — and they will most certainly try everything in the Rovian playbook — the oath they take in January will be not the Hippocratic one of physicians, but the hypocritic one.

FactCheck.org is a truly non-partisan non-profit organization whose mission is to check the accuracy of what is said by the major players in US politics. I urge you to have a look through their archives, and those of other reliable, nonpartisan sources like PolitiFact, or The Washington Post's Fact Checker blog. Yes, you will find some misstatements and misrepresentations from the Obama camp. But you will find the soil around the McCain camp to be far more fertile (thanks to constant composting), especially since the inception of Sarah Palin — who seems to have a pathological aversion to truthiness.

She seems to grok that, in Orwell's dystopia, "Who controls the past, controls the future." And at present, McCain-Palin seem to believe they can rewrite their own past deeds and words. Perhaps if John McCain owned a computer with which to work the internets, he'd see, as we can, that the past, in fact, lives on the Googles and the YouTubes.

So work your keyboard, and call bullshit when you see it, when you hear it, when you smell it.

Lipstuck pig image from Talking Points Memo. Thanks to Rose's Lime for the tip.

I'm Just Saying

Sometimes the resemblance is just uncanny...

Sarah Palin Republican VP nominee	Dr. Melfi Mob Shrink
John McCain Republican Presidential Nominee	Dr. Evil Nefarious Villian

Don't Let the Vagina Fool You

Spare me the spin about "Maverick" John McCain's character. His VP choice, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, is not a bold pick by a straight-shooter. It's a spineless pick aimed directly at appeasing the evangelical fascists Republican "base."

Palin is a surprising pick, yes. But bold? Please. She is a knee-jerk conservative who breaks with the party line exactly nowhere that I can see (though her record is so astonishingly short that it's tough to know for sure). So anyone labeling her a bold or unusual pick needs to get past the GILF angle and her geographical background (oooh, Alaska!) and smell the moose droppings.

The fact is that Palin is an anti choice, pro gun, anti same-sex marriage, creationist evangelical who is for big oil, has supported Pat Buchanan, and who does not believe humans have played a role in climate change. She plays to the base in the sort of way that must make Karl Rove's naughty bits tingle, and is indicative of precisely how exclusive and narrow their party platform (more of a plank, really) has become. I can only imagine George Bush dreams about giving her his patented beach volleyball style fanny pats.

She's a committed familyist, a devout reader of only the second half of the second amendment, and though she is churchly, I presume she does not support, say, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. She's ultra-white, younger than McCain (but aren't we all?), and has model-perfect teeth. She's a slightly hotter, less experienced Mitt Romney or even Tim Pawlenty. End of story.

The time is right for a woman VP, or president for that matter. Part of me would like to have seen Obama pick Hillary as VP (but what to do with Bill?). But after the tough primaries, it would have smacked of tokenism as much as McCain's pick. Face it, he didn't pick her for her null foreign policy experience, or to deliver the Alaska vote; he picked her, apparently, to deliver the disgruntled Hillary vote.

Admittedly, McCain is shrewd to pick a woman, but this woman? He showed no love for Condi (though, frankly, I don't have any love for her either) or Kay Bailey Hutchison. They must have been too close to center on abortion. Surely, at the very least, he could have done a better job of vetting his pick.

But no, and so here she is. For all intents and purposes, Dan Quayle with breasts (as she reminds us).

In fact, Dan Quayle may even have been more qualified as VP. (Hell, Michael Palin might be more qualified.) Palin has been a governor for all of a year and a half. Before that, she was the mayor in a town of ~7,000. Before that, a pageant girl. Where I live, that sort of résumé points to a possibly successful campaign for city alderman (and where one's constituency would be much larger than 7,000). Not, mind you, a comb-over away from the US presidency.

"Country First: Reform, Prosperity, Peace" is their campaign's lofty motto.

"Reform"? In addition to the fact that Sarah Palin is already (in her brief gubernatorial term) under investigation for abuse of power, we have further evidence that a McCain-Palin White House would be every bit as controlling and galling as the Bush-Cheney White House (possibly with an equal chance of a VP shooting a hunting buddy in the face!).

"Prosperity"? Well, certainly Cindy McCain has prospered. But I just don't see hubby John raising her taxes for the good of the lower and middle class.

"Peace"? John McCain? Read his lips, as he is fine with leaving American troops in Iraq for the next 100 years (or even, he later amended, 10,000).

So, disgruntled Hillaristas will have to be blind to all but anatomy to vote for a McCain-Palin ticket. With the balance of the Supreme Court teetering, it's an awful one for women even more so than men, and McCain's VP choice must be seen as what it is: a pandering, doddering, impulsive and wreckless misstep — the sort that has typified the Bush II administration, and the first of what will be legion, if elected — by a once-likable "straight-talk[ing]" guy who has arguably lost his game, his independence, and his spine.

It is clear (as it must be, when noted confidently by John Kerry) that "maverick" McCain would utterly despise the new McCain version '08, whoring himself like this. The more centrist candidate he was in 2000 actually made me think for a few moments back then that it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world for him to win the presidency. Indeed, back in 2000–01, it would not have — because as it happens, the worst thing in the world did happen. And here we are, dealing with the consequences of those eight painfully long years.

As that Ultimate Mistake-in-Chief himself has put it — in his inimitable, ineloquent, misquoted way — we won't get fooled again. So, open your eyes. And don't let the vagina fool you. Sarah Palin is a moralist neo-con in news anchor's clothing. And John McCain is the guy who hand-picked her.

Conventions

As my Democrat friends gather this week in Denver to (one can only hope) glimpse our nation's future, it's important to look at the special art of Officious Gathering.

I once had the distinct pleasure to attend a technical conference for work that was sited, as it happened, adjacent to a conference for the owners and managers of workout gyms. The juxtaposition of the two groups could not have been any more clear or any more awkward; the effect was mesmerizing, as middle-aged cubicle-dwelling tech writer geeks were forced to rub elbows with no-less-geeky but far more buff fake-tanned fitness purveyors.

It highlighted the fact that conferences are a world unto themselves, and that they have become so pervasive it's difficult to imagine a time without them. There is much chatter about how the Internet has brought together disparate groups and allows us all to fly our particular brand of freak flag in a supportive environment — but in this case, it would seem we do that online backslapping only as a means to then convene in person.

Maybe 10 years ago, my friend Spider and I were rolling through the French Quarter when we spotted the first of many gaggles of Goths, hanging out in their pastiness, bruise-colored clothing, and black lipstick. When we stopped into a bar for a late afternoon beer, we encountered a table of about a dozen. I looked at Spider. "I have to go ask," I said. He nodded empathetically, and I pulled up a chair to their corner table.

They looked at me — the normal freak — suspiciously, but not unkindly. "I have to ask," I said. "It's just that there seem to be a lot of you folks around." The one who was clearly the leader nodded at me. "There's a convention," he said. "There are about 1200 of us in town for a convention."

It seemed odd to me that a conspicuously and so purposely outcast group would go to the trouble of orchestrating an Officious Gathering. It was somewhat off-putting, like hyper-organized anarchists setting up local bingo nights via their listserv.

These days, there are so many unconventional conventions that I wouldn't be surprised if there were conferences on organizing conferences. And the prospects of Comic-Con–style alliterative naming are endless, as there are surely all manner of Confidence Conferences (i.e., "self-help"), Condom-Makers, and Convent Conventions.

Consultants in certain industries find themselves serial convention goers, as they seek to drum up business. Every city worth its salt now has a shiny convention center of sorts. And whole industries have sprung up around the business of conventioneering itself, where big money is made supplying the millions of requisite (one-time use, mind you, so it's a killer product) plastic badges and badgeholders and lanyards and pins — not to mention the promotional SHWAG.

Oh, the SHWAG; let me count the ways. Ninety percent of it is crap. But it's free crap, and there's nothing we Americans like more than free crap. You've got your printed pins and pens, flashlight fobs and fleece, mugs and mouse pads. (In fact, if you've actually gone out and purchased a mouse pad in the past 10 years, you're a sucker with no business connections whatsoever.) At most conventions, you're given a SHWAG bag just so you can carry the rest of your SHWAG.

And whether Goths, consumer electronics, or Japanime — or the RNC and DNC — every convention has its requisite organizing committee and wanna-bes, full of frightening Kool-Aid drinking yahoos handing out registration materials.

Fanaticism in and of itself — whether religious or secular, Hollywood or hockey — can be a prickly thing, but when combined with the PTA-type do-gooder activism you see at these gatherings, it's downright scary.

Our two political conventions will be nothing short of revival meetings filled to bursting with Obamaites (and Hillary Holdouts) and McCainiacs seeking to anoint their own as the next Savior-in-Chief. You can recognize the laity as looking very similar to those who travel to Times Square on New Year's Eve, and to Boston's Esplanade for the July 4th fireworks. Not surprisingly, they even dress in much the same way, what with their über-Patriot hats and flags and flair and such.

Thank god very little political decision-making need be conducted at these pow-wows anymore, because it makes my skin crawl to think of my vote being cast or platform decided by an oligarch superdelegate wearing several yards of a couture designer's rendering of Old Glory — even if it turns out they're voting for the same guy I am. Maybe it's my Marxist (Groucho, not Karl) upbringing that "I don't want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member," or maybe I'm just disturbed when people instill in individuals the collective accrued reverence that I reserve for (admittedly) the Philadelphia Flyers.

Either way, it's convention time in Denver, and then in Minneapolis, where local night owls can sure be to find tables of garishly dressed conventionaires at hotel bars — still wearing their nametags, undoubtedly — slugging down boat drinks. By all means, beware of them. But beware too the men and women they cheer each night at the podiums. These political conventions have on occasion been sited directly adjacent to Con-Artist Conventions. And the two groups are often indistinguishable.

Otakon pics thanks to Dave D; DNC pic via the conference website.