The Main Event
August 28th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
It’s entirely possible that news might happen today, but it’s less clear who’ll be around to report it, since the order of the day is BarackObama’s much-anticipated speech tonight at Invesco Field. Party people are estimating a 4-hour process — doubtless riddled with snafus — for getting into the stadium, and that’s if James Dobson’s peevish prayer for rain goes unanswered.
Given the tightness of security and the unthinkable prospect of being left out in the parking lot, we’re not even going to try to bring our laptops along.
Then again, being left out might not be the worst thing that could happen. A timing miscalculation last night at the Pepsi Center left one Observer reporter stuck so high in the Pepsi Center’s nosebleed seats — directly behind the stage, no less — that it was simply impossible to hear, never mind see, the evening’s speeches. So we abandoned the interior and went out into the hall and found a big flat-screen TV, maxed out its volume, and settled in on the carpet to watch the feed.
We weren’t the only ones, and we suspect we had a better view than most. From inside the hall, for instance, we never would have seen Texas Congressman Chet Edwards’ unfortunately canned smile, which, we suspect, had more than a little to do with the fact that he didn’t make it past Obama’s VP short-list.
Joe Biden, of course, did, and the sense around the big screen was that he knocked his acceptance speech out of the park. And when Obama unexpectedly joined him, well, the Hall and the hallway both went wild.
Plus, there was one undeniable advantage to our position. Once the speeches were over, as the Pepsi Center emptied to the soft sounds of the traditional closing invocation, we found ourselves almost directly in the flight path of the secret service crews hustling Hillary and Bill Clinton (who’d exceeded high expectations earlier in the evening) out of their box seats and into a waiting catering-staff elevator. Both of them walked within 10 feet of us, turning heads and setting off a flurry of hurried shutter-snapping. They’re shorter in real life than you might think, and have larger heads than you’d expect, as if they had been manufactured specifically to camera-ready specs.
It was as unexpectedly close to this convention’s real deals as we’ve been all week.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:00 pm
i’ve loved reading these posts. absolutely the most fun coverage of the convention. they sort of remind me of that old molly ivins piece about the opening of the lbj library, “a ball was had by all.” terrific.