Coloring the convention

Here's a conspiracy theory for our time. Fox News did the pool coverage for the convention. That was a controversial development among Democrats back when the pool credentials were awarded, and it remains so now. So how is Fox executing its scheme to undermine the Democrats? According to a Coloradan I spoke with last night, they're including too many black people in the cutaway shots.

I'm not really sure how that undermines the party, and in fact I'm pretty sure the Republicans also go to great lengths to present a politically correct mix of races for the cameras during their own conventions and SOTU addresses. But when my friend explained that the cutaways keep creating the impression that half or more of the conventioneers are African-American, I realized that I'm in on the conspiracy too: Though I identified them only by affiliation, I must admit that three out of the five people I quoted in my lurker roundup yesterday were black! The truth is out: There are many black people at this convention. (Who would have guessed?)

But again, how does accurately or inaccurately depicting the racial makeup of the crowd help the GOP, hurt the Democrats, or in fact discombobulate anybody except this weirdo bean counter I was talking to? It turns out that when the bigoted troglodytes out in the Real America (which I apparently don't understand the way this guy does) get a load of all that soul, they'll flee to John McCain. (You see how it's never you who's the racist; it's those ignorant others in the heartland.)

Because the pun is so easy, I'll paraphrase the original Dr. J., and say that to endeavor to make the Democrats look bad would be like blacking the chimney. That was already done when the party itself allowed Melissa Etheridge to shamble up on stage and deliver the worst musical performance in galactic history. That rambling, tuneless, arrhythmic atrocity made me deeply, deeply ashamed to be white: