SWEATIN' TO THE OLDIES

Still trying to make sense of what I saw at the DNC on Wednesday night and how it got covered. The Fleet center was abuzz with scads of bright, young, energetic, active, idea-driven, hard-working people, and the journalists I saw on TV the day after were tired, cynical, self-obsessed, patronizing slugs. You couldn't get a seat in the hall after a certain point, but walking around the place was a pure thrill if only for the sport of people-watching and celeb sightings. A lot of us gravitated to the Comcast booth where a large-screen TV was airing a live feed, and crowds gathered for the major speakers.

Al Sharpton may not be Mr. Integrity, but he is a voice for change from within the system, and there was a serious thrill that passed through his audience as he left his text. Of course, we only learned he left his text after the fact, but it was clear that if much of his Bush stuff had been vetted, something weird was going on, it was way too frank and impassioned. And he had his audience riding on every wave, most people forgot who he was and a lot of his past and just rolled with it. It was news, it was electric, it was everything the DNC had airbrushed out of the proceedings: just by being there, Sharpton argued that Bush was far worse than any Tawana Brawley, and most of us enjoyed the red meat he slung. There was very little of substance to argue with when he said "If Bush had been President 50 years ago Clarence Thomas would have never made it to law school..."

This got him Sharpton into trouble, but only the kind a black man knows too well: damned if he stays on script, damned if he strays. "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose..." Even soap liberals like Doris Kearns Goodwin and Newsweek's Howard Fineman told Chris Matthews Sharpton was an embarrassment, that even BLACK folks should be insulted (and we know how "black folks" love it when Whitey tells them how to feel). Matthews threw it down to a reporter at the podium who stuck a mic in Sharpton's face to explain "whatever it was you were riffing on..." As Jon Stewart retorted, "YOU WERE THERE!"

It all reminded me of Jesse Jackson's "hymie-town" apology in 1988 (?), which was seriously stirring and provoked a huge yawn from Sam Donaldson. Can't a flawed politician give a great speech? How long are we going to treat black politicians as fringe figures in American life? How come not a single network anchor is black? How come none of the talking heads I saw covering this convention were black? Why should blacks continue participating if Democrats and the media systematically neuter their presence?

ONE LAST THING: as the headline suggests, the DNC house band cooked, but I haven't been able to find anything so much as a lineup. Got a clue?