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By tacitus Posted in Special Events — Comments (6) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Preparatory to the Compassionate Terminator's address -- and spurred on by the news that Chris Matthews got jumped by demonstrators -- I decided to abandon the Garden and head out to see the evening protests.

Read on.

Emerging from the Garden, I came into the warren of steel barriers and AR-15-toting police personnel who have sealed Penn Plaza off from the rest of Manhattan. The Garden doors and their attendant metal detectors and checkpoints are often as not manned by TSA personnel -- a surprise indeed. I asked one of them whether this was part of the TSA mission. "Nah," he said, "they're just short-staffed. I'm from Los Angeles." "Are you the only government agents capable of manning security checkpoints?" I asked. "No," he replied, "There's Guardsmen and cops." "Are there Guardsmen to do it?" He just laughed.

The previous evening, my fellow Red Stater and I went out for drinks with Steve Hayes: just outside the barriers were a pair of young women, one with a video camera with which she zoomed in to capture images of my convo passes. She shoved the lens toward my chest. "He's got credentials," she remarked, and it occurred to me that, coupled with the TSA-evidenced security manpower shortage, that the convention was not as secure as it may seem. QED.

I digested this vaguely disturbing information and strode into the fading glow of the twilight sky. For all my disdain for NYC -- acquired in spades while living here not so long ago -- it is a stupendously beautiful place at dusk, when the skyscrapers glow even as enough light remains to discern their oft-gorgeous architectural details. So I did the tourist thing: I strode east down 33rd Street with my hands shoved in my pockets, and my neck craned upwards in awe at the towering magnificence above. The Empire State Building was lit in appropriately patriotic colors. Same as it was after 9/11, it struck me.

"Another f------ Republican," I heard, and as my reverie broke, I decided it would be a good idea to take my convention pass off its lanyard and shove it into my pocket. My would-be interlocutor and his girl sneered as they walked by, and I said nothing. I was nearing Greeley Square park, off 6th Avenue and Broadway, and the crowds were thickening, with a steadily rising proportion of "Buck Fush" t-shirts and protest signs. Crossing the tiny park took me into a crowd that was almost pure protest. I was a pilgrim in an unholy land and, dressed in my Republican flunky outfit -- khakis and blue dress shirt -- I wondered how long it would take for my neighbors to recognize that I might not be one of them. Having heard more than a few tales of harrassment in the past several days -- abusive language from strangers, shoving, and especially snatching of convo credentials -- I was hardly eager to expose myself.

There's no better way to blend in than to act like you belong. I shoved into the crowd as it thickened and surged. Striking, to me, was the comparative diversity of the crowd compared to my prior protest companions at Still We Rise. The ethnic diversity of NYC was certainly on display -- but then, when is it not? -- and there were even a very few families. In the thick of the crush, I came across two rusty tricycles with wagons attached to the back. Amiable fat girls in granola uniforms thrust pudgy arms into the somewhat grungy bins and emerged with fruit and other edibles. "FRESH FRUIT," they bellowed, and passers-by, ambling along at about 0.5 mph, would take the bounty of -- well, whomever was funding this thing. Feeling the kinship of the pasty pudgy for its own kind, I approached and was rewarded with a bag of strange puffs that looked like pork rinds. QRUNCHIES, the bag said. "Qrunchies?" I asked to no one in particular. "It's quinoa, man," answered a lanky, bronzed fellow with an African tricolor knit cap. "What's quinoa?" "Dunno, man." The quinoa Qrunchies -- they were good. I munched in solidarity and watched the signs go by.

Bush: Too stupid to breed.

Environmental threat level: ELEVATED

F--- Bush

Stop the war on youth from here to Najaf!

Republicans out.

How did our oil get under their sand?

Kerry-Edwards.

LET IRAQ LIVE.

This crowd was at once something calmer -- no giant puppets, for example -- and more threatening than the prior demonstration I'd attended. It surged and pushed, and the press took you places you did not necessarily want to go. Small children looked alarmed as towering adults squeezed upon them. And a mother with a baby decided she needed to get out as the general sense of agitation spread. A man began shouting: "Move! Woman with baby! Get out of the way!" Around him, others took up the chant: "Move! Woman with baby! Get out of the way!" And then, somewhere, as it got repeated, it changed: "Move! Baby! Get out of the way!" Like the children's game of telephone. "Move, Bush! Get out of the way!" "MOVE, BUSH! GET OUT THE WAY!" "MOVE, BUSH! GET OUT THE WAY!" A group of young women found this immensely funny -- hip hop politics! -- and began shouting this bold new slogan lustily, to the delight of the crowd. The woman with baby went nowhere and looked helpless.

I painstakingly shoved my way to another section of the throng and ended up beneath various signs affirming the value of sunshine and peace. Two young women gazed up at the Empire State Building. "Look," one of them said sotto voce, "Look there!" "What is it?" I looked up too, and saw what they saw -- far up the massive tower, one of the windows was flickering. On. Off. A blue glow. Almost certainly a television set. "It's like....a signal," declared the first girl, "Get a photo." Her companion dutifully complied, murmuring, "Why are they doing it?" "It's the perfect place to watch us."

Of course.

A thunderous roar erupted from the throng. Several vehicles sped by, waved through by the well-armed NYPD personnel pressing us into our confined space. "Why are we booing?" I asked no one in particular. "It's the delegates," replied a woman to my left. I looked over at her -- black shirt, khaki skirt, sensible shoes, husband attached -- and she continued: "They're all being bused in to the convention now."

"They've been at the convention for a while now."

"They have?" Suspicion.

"Yeah -- they've been casting ballots all afternoon."

"For what?" Stupefaction.

"For the President."

"Why?" Disgust.

"They like him." She recoiled; her spouse looked bored. "They only vote for him."

"That's not democracy."

"Oh...." I thought better of it. "Certainly not."

People around me squinted, as if to signal an emerging awareness that I might not belong here, and I weighed my options. I could stay. I could stay and see if any excitement erupted. But the chances were low: the planned A31 anarchist ruckus was clearly a bust, and the NYPD was swarming along the streets like ants at a picnic. I could stay and hold my tongue and hope that the convo credentials sticking out of my pocket would not spur a flicker of recognition in some benighted soul. I could stay and get into shouting matches with dimwitted leftists made dumb with anger: or dumb, perhaps, with the inevitable dumbness that attends demonstrations of

href="http://tacitus.org/story/2004/5/19/14041/6962">all stripes.

Or I could go. So I went. I shoved against the crowd; I was halted by a phalanx expressing empathy for bleeding Palestine; I circumvented them; I was glowered-at by a gaggle of twentysomethings with Kerry buttons; and I shortly found myself on the convo floor with the Illinois delegation, watching Arnold Schwarzenegger exhort the faithful. In its own way, it was as vapid as the protests -- as the Terminator invoked the specter of "economic girlie men," two well-dressed, silver-haired men before me solemnly rendered one another high fives -- but it had the virtue of being a thing that I was somewhat in agreement with. Also like the protests, my appetite for the spectacle was limited. I left as the Bush twins began their dialogue, and eventually wandered into the New York City streets to find a cab home. "Second and Third Street," I told the cabbie. We zoomed through the half-deserted thoroughfares of the metropolis, the cabbie zoning out on bhangra music, and me clutching my satchel and ARNOLD! sign I'd pilfered from the Illinoians. I debarked onto my Lower East Side corner, where it really does seem that the city won't sleep. Stumbling toward my building, passersby caught sight of me. The look, the clothes, certainly the sign: it all clued them in to the thing the protestors should have caught but didn't. And they let me know they knew my dirty secret.

"Another f------ Republican."