DENVER -- Going to the Pepsi Center to watch the politicians speak is a little bit like entering Dante's Inferno. Once you make it past the security screening, you emerge into an arena of many rungs, and the rung one achieves depends on the color of one's pass -- orange for arena, lavender for hall... These passes point to one's status in life -- delegate, press, guest, special guest -- yet are acquired and exchanged by such intricate mechanisms that they more accurately represent the arbitrary, yet very real, power of politics.
This evening, because of a misunderstanding with the convention committee, OffTheBus was able to secure only two passes. After 5 p.m., a number of passes became suddenly available -- it is mysterious to me how -- and OTB Project Director Amanda Michel sent me a series of furious texts about whom to call and how.
I dallied at the Big Tent until 7:20, which was my primary mistake, and then ambled across the bridge with approximately 2000 of my closest friends. It's also unclear to me who everyone here is. There are press, to be sure (Tucker Carlson was ruffling the hair of a teenage-looking girl I hope was his sister), and some people wearing delegate badges, but everyone else seems to be spectators, and we were all clamoring to get into the Pepsi Center and watch Hillary first-hand.
Alas. Although presumably the passes are doled out according to the seats the arena actually holds, by 8pm every single seat was taken, and pleasant but firm volunteers stood at the doors with their arms crossed and their heads shaking no. Even in hell, it appears, some of us can't get a place at the table.
For forty-five minutes, hundreds of credentialed people circled in Limbo around the arena, past the $4 hot dogs and the $7 nachos and the stand selling fried baby donuts by the dozen, eventually settling in front of the giant TVs to watch Hillary Clinton not accept her party's nomination. A woman scribbled on her reporter's notebook, and a foreign journalist filmed the TV. At a convention where the media outnumber the delegates 2 to 1, it seems inevitable that we end up in this meta feedback loop, which surely must be our punishment for something.
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