27.Aug.2008

Political parties

“There is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging,” H.L. Mencken wrote after surviving the 1924 Democratic National Convention, where delegates took 17 days and 193 ballots to select John W. Davis as their standard bearer.

“It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard upon both the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it is somehow charming. One sits through long sessions wishing all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell - and then suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour,” he wrote.

And so we’ve transitioned from the almost alien-like bodies of Olympians to fawning, mindless political television as the Democratic National Convention fills the airwaves and newspapers this week.

That Mencken excerpt really explains my absolute love for the man. Unfortunately, I’ve only read bits and pieces, tiny “quotables” that have been attributed to him at any and all occassions. So it’s time to buy a book on the man, which I plan to do this evening.

I happened to do a little historic coverage for the Journal Star last Saturday. You may have heard of a certain someone (Joe Biden) becoming betrothed to another someone (Barack Obama) and that it happened somewhere deep in the Midwest (Springfield, Illinois.) So I may have been there. Stay tuned.

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Hello, sir or ma'am. You've accidentally arrived at the home of Adam, man of great height (over 6 feet, even!) and immense wisdom. After a brief 22-year stint in Kansas, he settled into a photography job at a mid-sized daily newspaper two hours south of Chicago. And although Sufjan Stevens wrote a song titled "Peoria, Destroyia!", he's still on the fence about his current home.

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