All the early indications are that the Democratic convention will be painfully dull.
There’s nothing new about such dullness, since the modern political convention tries to stretch one day’s activities into almost a week of babbling, strutting and fibbing.
The main purpose of a convention is to choose a presidential candidate. But that’s already been done in the primaries.
So the time is filled by politicians who bray into microphones about how happy they make us by seizing our money and flinging it every which way.
This doesn’t really matter to most people, since the majority of Americans will wisely ignore most of the somber silliness.
But it matters to me. As a media creature, I am an integral part of the convention. Yes, if it were not for the presence of the thousands of media creatures who flock to political conventions, the events wouldn’t exist.
Like the tree falling in the forest, if nobody is there to hear it, is there any noise?
More than that, though, it matters to me as a Chicagoan. If there is anything Chicago ain’t, it ain’t dull. Since it’s earliest days, it has been big, brawling, bawdy, boisterous, boozy and occasionally blotto.
It’s one thing for San Diego to host the Republican convention, which promises to be dull and depressing. San Diego, while a pleasant little city, is dull. It always has been because it is filled with retired Navy officers who spend their days picking lemons in their back yards. Wild and crazy guys.
But Chicago has a reputation to uphold. Remember, this was the last city to have a convention that was truly lively.
Some people insist on referring to the 1968 Democratic convention as “infamous.” But that’s unfair. It was great entertainment and fun.
It was fun for the cops who ran wild, trying to bash the skulls of the protesting hippies, Yippies, liberals and media creatures.
It was fun for the protesters and the hippies and the Yippies because it gave them a sense of history-making importance beyond their wildest grass-induced dreams.
It was fun for the liberals because they could shriek that Chicago’s oldtime politicians and cops were big brutes, and it inspired them to soon seize total control of the party.
And it was fun for the media creatures because it gave us a chance to be indignant, outraged and scold everyone involved.
But that was then, and this is now. And now there isn’t much going on. No unpopular war and no unpopular military draft to threaten the comfort of the well-born young. No LBJ to ask how many kids he killed today.
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Now, the protesters will be kept in designated areas where they can yammer at the TV cameras. Who cares, since most are just organized moochers, professional shakedown artists, and ego trippers?
So this convention promises to move as smoothly and dully as a swallow of warm milk.
Which is why I’m tossing out an idea and hoping that some daring business types will run with it.
My idea is jousting, and I’ll explain.
If you go to Bristol, Wis., just across the state line, you will find a delightful entertainment called the Bristol Renaissance Faire.
Actors dress the way they did in the era of Elizabeth I, the balding, sexually inhibited babe who ruled England from 1588 to 1603.
And there is jousting. As a Tribune reporter wrote: “It’s got high excitement: handsome knights jousting, their armor sparkling in the sun as they bash, clash and attempt to unseat one another.”
What I have in mind is something similar: jousting Chicago-style, a la 1968.
It could be done on any large tract of vacant land near the convention center. Or in Grant Park. Almost anywhere.
Instead of knights, we’d have guys in cops’ uniforms wielding billy clubs (soft plastic, of course) and trying to conk the heads of shaggy-haired, obscenity-screaming Yippies, who would throw bags of a dark brown substance at the cops (chocolate mousse rather than the original 1968 unmentionable stuff).
Rather than using actors, though, anyone could take part– for a fee, of course, to rent the costumes, the billy clubs and the chocolate mousse.
And some might pretend to be media creatures, which many media creatures already do, which would allow them to be hit on the head by the cops and lied to by the Yippies.
For a slightly higher fee, you might even choose to be the late Richard J. Daley and stand above the fray intoning his marvelous malapropism: “The police ain’t here to create disorder, they’re here to preserve disorder.”
It would be true performance art, living theater. And a great nostalgia trip, especially since most of the media creatures coming to Chicago are more interested in rehashing the 1968 convention than in yawning through the upcoming one.
And what a treat it would be for some of the surviving figures from the ’68 convention.
Tom Hayden, for example, was one of the protest leaders. Now he is a California politician, chum of wealthy and powerful liberals and Jane Fonda’s ex-husband.
He will be at this convention, and jousting could let him relive his 1968 role.
And maybe Jane Fonda would want to take part too. She’d probably want to be a Chicago cop and hit Tom on the head.
If not jousting, than something that is lively. Or the convention will be one long yawn.
Unless the president decides to hit some of our singles bars. But he’s not yet that far ahead in the polls.