Cue the celestial choirs ...

  DENVER - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple. The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.

  Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington's Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party's nomination for president. He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor. The show should provide a striking image for the millions of Americans watching on television as Obama delivers a speech accepting the Democratic presidential nomination.

  Politicians in past elections have typically spoken from the convention site itself, but the Obama campaign liked the idea of having their man speak to a larger, stadium-sized crowd not far from where the Democratic National Convention is being held, at the Denver pro basketball arena. Obama was taking a page from the campaign book of John Kennedy in 1960 when the future president delivered his acceptance speech to 80,000 people in the Los Angeles Coliseum. Once Obama speaks, confetti will rain down on him and fireworks will be fired off from locations around the stadium wall. Link

   You know, they can erect endless hollow classical facades for the Chosen One to frame himself and his vacuous rhetoric - he'll still be a hollow man. All this pomp and circumstance, imagery and theater is lost on voters. I defy you to find one out of hundred voters who can recall the halftime show at last year's Super Bowl. If the economy is indeed as dire as the Democrats would have the unwashed masses believe, then it stands to reason those voters might be entertained for a moment - but the spectre of all this fakery and the phony trappings of grand allusion will leave a very ugly aftertaste in their mouths that will linger all the way into the voting booth.

Spread the word! 

Comments

[ron, the gregarious hermit]

All he needs is to ride in on an ass, with the Obama faithful waving palms and singing hosanna

[ron, the gregarious hermit]

Better yet, and staying with the classical theme: toga, toGA TOGA TOGA TOGA! It's a fine line between cynically using strong symbols to attain or enhance power, and starting to believe in it. Say the difference between a Mussolini and Hitler. At first I thought this was an idealistic young man, naive but well intentioned. Now I think he has gone around the bend. He believes in his image a bit too much for comfort in a democratic republic.

[Jim Mcfalls]

The only thing that rememberable about any political convention is the balloon drop.

Reportedly this convention will not be having one; An anvil would be interesting.

[Uncle Fester]

Well, we'll get to bread and circuses eventually but it's too early yet...

[Oldcatman]

PUNT!

[Uncle Fester]

C'mon, OCM, aren't you up for a little empire-building? It'll be just like the old days in Haiti with Chesty!