An eclectic audience, star turns and a circus made for television

“Illinois, home of Abraham Lincoln.” “Mississippi, home of the blues.” “New Orleans, home of gumbo.”

Each invocation loudly offers the electoral vote-count (“15 votes for Senator Clinton, and 55 votes for the next President of the United States, Barack Obama”) as a proud, hospitable act. But the bland and cheerful tribute to homeliness barely hides the battles over political real estate that have preceded this glorious moment.

And today, in the afternoon, when the roll call started inside Pepsi Center, the tension was palpable. It dissipated amidst cheers when the delegates from Arkansas, in a spirit of unity, cast all their Clinton votes in favour of Obama. Later, New Mexico yielded their votes to Illinois, and Illinois yielded, in turn, to the state of New York. And amidst the mystery of this procedure, Hillary Clinton appeared, electrifying the crowd. Or perhaps more than her, it was her act, asserting unity, soothing fears and jangled nerves.

The speakers that the viewers at home see on their television are usually addressing only the camera. The viewer at home is saved from the tedium of dead speeches and a circus of self-commemoration — a delegate having a photograph taken with a celebrity like Charles Barkley, or dancing in the aisle with an outrageous hat on the head till the cameraman from NBC looks her way.

But why do I mock? Maybe this is the essence of democracy: every person’s shot at fame comes from the fair opportunity to appear on television.

In this wasteland of the television dream, it is wonderful to find someone like eighteen-year-old Ravi Mulani who has been blogging about the convention for sepiamutiny.com. Mulani read Barack Obama’s memoir, Dreams From My Father, and was struck by its honesty. It gave him a model. “It’s in the teenager’s interest to be painfully honest,” he said.

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