Watson Wire

Convention Blog Report: It ain’t easy being green II

Wednesday, August 27, 2008 |

As I reported in a previous entry, the Democratic Party is trying to make this a “Green” Convention.  But, the desire to do right environmentally loses to the old traditional desire to make good pictures for TV.

For virtually every speaker, there’s some message the Party wants to send to the masses watching this show from outside the convention hall.  One way to send the message is giving every screaming delegate a sign that reinforces whatever the speaker is saying.  The delegate becomes a living billboard with the job of waiving the sign like crazy. 

With many speakers, there’s been more than one sign.  After all, the speech may make more than one point.  For example, when Senator Clinton was speaking, we first were given signs that said, simply, “Hillary”.  Then, we were handed signs that said, “Unity”.  Some of the Unity signs had the name Hillary on one side.  Others had the name Obama on the flip side.  

Nearly every major speech is accompanied by at least one sign.  

Even a luke-warm environmentalist can see we’ve lost a significant number of trees with all of these posters.  

Ah, but the pictures are great.  At least I hope so.