Music Blogs

Playboy magazine had assigned me to cover the Democrats' convention in Denver. A few days later, my editor realized that they would be going to press on the last day of the convention, and that their next issue wouldn't be published until after the election, so my assignment was withdrawn. But I've learned to deal with disappointment in my own particular Zen Bastard kind of approach. I was able to put that disappointment in perspective by meditating on the inconceivability of infinite time and infinite space until my head was about to explode. Coincidentally, disappointment would become a subtheme of the convention.

"I'm leaning to Obama, but I'm still mad," said a devout supporter of Hillary Clinton. "It's a childish mad, but there it is," adding that she was attending Obama's acceptance speech in this huge outdoor stadium along with 84,000 others, because "I wasn't going to let my disappointment stand in the way of being at what is an historic event."

A friend of mine--an even madder Clinton backer--cloaks her own disappointment within a conspiratorial theory: "Obama and John Edwards conspired to steal the election from Hillary by keeping Edwards' sleazy behavior under the radar. They stole the election, just like the Supremes did when they handed the crown to Bush over Gore. They conspired to keep Edwards in the race, sucking publicity, money and delegates away from Hillary. Get over it? Not a [bleeping] chance. I'm sure this is why Bill Clinton is so pissed off, and he can't do [diddly] about it."

Speaking of Bill, when he finished his speech, the convention deejay played Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow," which had been Clinton's theme song during the 1996 campaign. And didn't his opponent, Bob Dole, use as "his" theme song Beck's "I'm A Loser, So Why Don't You Kill Me?" The most ironic background music at the 2008 convention occurred when global-warming guru Al Gore took the stage to the tune of "Let The Sunshine In." Gore's best soundbite was about John McCain "now openly endorsing the policies of the Bush-Cheney White House, and promising to actually continue them, the same policies, all over again. Hey, I believe in recycling, but that's ridiculous."

In fact, the whole convention presented a kaleidoscope of images and soundbites. There was, for example, the image of two wardrobe guys holding up six pants-suits, each of a different color, and later Hillary's soundbite about "The Sisterhood Of Traveling Pants-Suits." She was wearing the orange one, standing in front of a blue background, matching the orange and blue colors of the logo on the podium.

My favorite soundbite was uttered by CNN's Wolf Blitzer, referring to the historic nature of this occasion that cable-channel viewers would some day reminisce, "I was here and I remember Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper talking about it that night." And my favorite image occurred when MSNBC's Chris Matthews' hair was mussed up by a woman in the street who claimed that Obama had been a "registered Muslim" as a child.

Yes, Richard Nixon had to say, "I'm not a crook," then, Bill Clinton had to say, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," and now Barack Obama has to say, "I am not a Muslim"--followed, of course, by Jerry Seinfeld saying, "Not there's anything wrong with that." Obama also has to prove that when his current political acquaintance, former Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers, was busy planting bombs, he, Obama, was only eight years old.

He was only two years old when Martin Luther King gave his classic "I Have A Dream" speech about racial equality in front of the Lincoln Memorial, and now here, Obama was--a living legacy of that dream coming true--accepting the Democratic Party nomination for president on the 45th anniversary of that milestone at the March on Washington. I was there with a group of friends and my wife, Jeanne, who was four months pregnant and extremely uncomfortable. It was hot and crowded there, and all she really wanted to do was go to an air-conditioned movie.

So, while King was delivering his most famous speech, we were the only ones in a theater, watching Bye, Bye, Birdie. Naturally, I was very disappointed, but there are moments when your priorities immediately fall into place, and there's not even a decision to make. Martin Luther King had a dream, but we were cool.