Maybe Comedy Is Pretty

Matt Welch | July 28, 2004

Tonight, it sure felt like we witnessed the national coming-out party of a new political rock star. But, Obama and Bill Clinton aside, who in this gathering of 35,000 humans has any real Q rating? If two days of observation (in between scrambling around to find halfway decent working conditions ... whoops!) are any guide, the race isn't even close -- it's every on-air personality from The Daily Show. I've seen Garrison Keillor lope past the Media Pavilion unmolested, Peter Jennings get carded by door girls, and apparently I almost knocked Richard Dreyfuss clean over without even seeing the little fella � and meanwhile Mo Rocca gets freakin' mobbed by groupies, many of them journalists. (When I asked a volunteer driver who his most exciting passenger had been, he proudly pulled out a press credential bearing Rocca's autograph.) In fact, I witnessed a dozen reporters lining up at the security checkpoint burst out in spontaneous applause at the mere sight of Steve Carell. "Thank you!" one woman yelled. "Keep up the good work!"