At the airport on the way to Ars, I caught the beginning of John McCain's speech to the GOP convention. Even though the Republican strategy of masking their divisive and imperialist politics with moderate faces at the convention is as patently obvious as their "rainbow" delegation shots in 2000, at some level I still wanted to think of McCain as someone who could stand up to W. Within seconds of his tortured logic about the necessity - and moral clairty - for war in Iraq, the question quickly became what role had he been promised in a second term. Then he tilted against Michael Moore - that "disingenuous filmmaker," who also happened to be in attendance at the convention - to sustained boos for Moore. When I arrive in Frankfurt and read the headlines, will it be reported as a miscalculation by Rove because of inadvertantly taking away the spotlight from Bush-McCain and turning attention to a willing accomplice in Moore? Or will the analysis be about the attempt to revive the culture wars with a Dan Quayle shot-over-the-bow at "extremist" propaganda like Fahrenheit 9/11.
Somehow this depressing sighting of Orwell-America on display in the global airport living room was the perfect accompaniment to the joyless security that is air travel post 9-11.
Two artists who have been covering this beat for at least 16 years from "our" perspective are Jon Winet and Margaret Crane, whose Conventional 2004 website just launched with "pictures, articles, videos and sound clips from the convention sites and around the world."
At the airport on the way to