Going to Denver? Watch Out for Dingbat Campaign Consultants
No, I’m not in Denver. Been there, done that, got lots of t-shirts, hats, buttons, and memories of spending the days in transit from event to event and watching hordes of people cruising from event to event to see who they might see there and of course to be seen themselves. I plan on keeping tabs on the convention happenings and blog throughout though. And I imagine I’ll have a better seat from my home office. Here’s one good convention website resource with schedules, speakers, events, and up to date electoral information all in one place.
Do you Twitter? I’ve never Twittered before, but I signed up so I can follow Huffington Post bloggers and perhaps post Twitters there, if I can figure out how to say anything in 140 characters or less.
My worst convention memory was in 2004 when I spoke at the Democratic National Convention. Actually, it was mostly a good experience, since it was the first time a Planned Parenthood leader (I was president of the national organization at the time) had been invited to speak at a party convention and I was proud of having built the organization’s political clout. I’d written a great speech going in–smart, humorous, and skewering George W. Bush. Well, some dingbat in John Kerry’s campaign had decided no one could say anything bad about Bush. They censored everyone’s speeches. Then they made us read the approved speech from a teleprompter. Speakers were not allowed to bring paper to the podium, lest we should divert from our script.
Well, you know I couldn’t resist getting one good jibe in at Bush, so while I was at the podium for my three minutes of fame, I inserted a sentence that wasn’t in the script. Holy moly. The teleprompter screen started fluctuating wildly back and forward as the operator presumably tried to find where I was. Or maybe they were trying to flummox me as punishment for going off the reservation. It was pretty amusing really, watching myself afterward moving back onto what I remembered of the prepared script, trying to make it look as seamless as possible while the prompter caught back up with me.
It was amusing, that is, until after the convention when the same dingbats were apparently still advising Kerry not to respond to the Swift Boat attacks. And that’s why he’s not running for his second term right now. Will Obama learn from that? So far, I am worried.
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