Now that the smoke has quite cleared, I see that Waterbones, with her ever-watchful eye for well-written racy blogs, has found a blog providing a working girl's perspective on the Republican National Convention.
For my money, though, the best blogger working the RNC beat has to be Michael Bérubé. His posts from the convention are long and brilliant:
It turns out that the power of Republican rhetoric is too much for poor Mr. Bérubé.
Folks, I'll level with you on the level — I did not know any of this. I did not know that Kerry said he would have voted before against the $87 billion after he did not vote for it. I did not know that President Bush stayed with those 9/11 construction workers “much longer than was planned.” Thanks to the liberal media and the hyper-liberal campus by which I am surrounded, I have been contributing to the left-wing blogosphere echo-chamber without once questioning my assumptions about the Republican party. But today's GOP really is a remarkable bunch. “The best speech I've seen at a convention,” said William Kristol of Rudy Guiliani's performance. “He knew what he wanted to say. The Wednesday and the Thursday and the Friday, and the construction worker hugging Bush, and all the other things he said,” said Fred Barnes. How can you argue against someone who knew what he wanted to say? You can't, is the answer, and that is why, after only one evening of this convention, I'm willing to bet that this land is Bush land, where people know that they say what they say in the way that they just said it.
....
It was about a President who knows how to terminate terrorism. That's right, you wanted to know if Arnold would say "terminate," and you got your answer &mdahs; we will terminate terrorism. Terrorism will come at us in a big truck carrying crude oil or liquid nitrogen or something, and we'll crush it in a drill press or maybe shoot it and shatter it into a million pieces, but then the terrorists' metal forearm will survive and provide scientists with the basis for creating a whole new kind of artificial intelligence, or the liquid-metal terrorist will re-form and we'll have to shoot it with one of those huge exploding bullets and make it fall backwards into a vat of molten steel, and then we'll have to send ourselves back into the past (that is, the present) to protect ourselves from the terrorists who want to start a global thermonuclear war, but then it'll turn out that the war happens anyway, which is kind of complicated, because we thought we'd avoided it when we shot the liquid-metal terrorist with the huge exploding bullet and he fell . . . never mind, that's not the point, the point is that leadership is all about "making decisions you think are right, and then standing behind those decisions." Even when it looks like your decision to invade Iraq was based on the advice of a notorious kleptomaniac who was possibly serving as a double agent for Iranian mullahs, you stand behind your decision, because leadership is all about making decisions you think are right and then standing behind them. Um, I said that already. But that's all right, because it makes it even more true!! And I stand firm in repeating what I said about leadership!!
....
I've spent my adult life as a member of the liberal cultural elite, living in college towns and teaching literature. I thought I was pretty sharp, with my "postmodern" this and my “cultural studies” that. But do you have any idea how the real elite in this country live? Holy mother of God in a public creche, folks, you can't begin to imagine the perks around here. To hell with the cultural elite — they couldn't see Dick Cheney's tax bracket if the entire English department at Harvard stood on each other's shoulders. The political elite is where it's at, people, the economic elite. Now there's an elite. And let me tell you, it is mighty, mighty fine up here. No more Genny Cream Ale in cans for me — there's nothing in this suite but Macallan and Stoli. And the servants couldn't be nicer. Everyone here treats them with honest-to-God conservative compassion, and they seem to be just fine with that.
They're long and fun; read ’em all.
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