Back Blogging

So I finally arrive back at Madison Square Garden (five p.m.) and run smack into my friend John Podhoretz who looks at me with concern and says, “Are you feeling okay?” He was about the tenth person to ask me that today, worried that I am in a depressed mood (from reading this blog) while everyone else is whooping it up at the convention. (One of the commenters on here recommended I take a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge… not a bad idea.) John went on to tell me that this is “as good as it gets” for conventions. He’s been to seven. I’ll take his word for it.

In the interest of full disclosure, and in your ability to evaluate what I am writing, I will admit that I am in New York for another reason than politics and blogging. A family member is ill. This is not a plea for condolences – please don’t offer them. We were worried about her but she will be fine. I just thought I owed the readership a look at why I may be the darkest blogger on blogger’s row this week.

But in any case, and not just to add to the controversy, I’d like to log in on Zell Miller. That was one down home stemwinder out of the 1930s he gave and I agreed with pretty much everything he said. I think a lot of the negative reaction comes from the general lack of (or fear of) honesty in polite society. You’re not supposed to say what you think. You’re supposed to mask it. Personally I prefer speakers, even when I disagree with him. That’s why Al Sharpton, much of whose views and even more of whose background I despise, is my favorite speaker on the Democratic side.

I didn’t see Zell live, however. Speeched out, I was out eating French, Spanish and English cheese at a place called Artisanal with John Hinderaker of http://www.powerlineblog.com/and Hugh Hewitt. The food and company were great and we practically closed the place. By the time I got back to the apartment where I was staying, it was long past the hour of any speeches. I was about to ask now was Cheney when my seventeen-year old nephew Noah said, “Did you see Zell Miller?” as if I had missed the event of the decade. His father Richard, a politically savvy fellow, chimed in agreement and within a minute I was over at the family Mac, watching the speech on streaming video. It was hellfire and brimstone in Quicktime… but since it was Quicktime, I kind of viewed it under water… so factor that in with the family