AddieStan

Lockdown BOSTON--Your blogstress should have known better. She had, after all, just gotten a call from her colleague, Lou Chibbaro, Jr. , staff reporter for the Washington Blade , from the convention floor, who said, "We're in some kind of lockdown here. They won't let me off the floor." She figured he just meant the convention floor, closed for the customary sweep. But no. Being bad girls, blogstresses occassionally need a smoke, and yours made the fatal error of stepping outside the building to inhale. Delegates were being held back by barriers at the foot of the stairways and escalators, but no cue was taken. It's just crowd control, n'est-ce pas ? It was still early, and the candidate wasn't scheduled to begin droning until 10:00. Upon returning to the building, your intrepid muse was met by phalanxes of police officers or some sort of law enforcement in black hats, as well as regular Boston cops, everywhere, and nobody, not even your blogstr...

Post-toastie BOSTON--This could well be the last AddieStan post of the evening. Though your blogstress did manage to get herself into the Fleet Center tonight in an extralegal manner (which involved, literally, a credential being passed through a fence), it seems that a good chunk of the press filing center is being turned over to the press corps that travels with Kerry. This is my fourth national political convention, and I've never seen this done. The candidate's traveling press corps is composed of reporters who work for the well-heeled outfits that have their own workrooms here. But considering the fact that, at least according to the DNC, your blogstress has no business being here at all, one supposes she should be grateful for the printed texts of speeches, the internet access enjoyed thus far, and the company of journalists.

Kerry's speech BOSTON--Well, they've just passed out excerpts from the text of Kerry's acceptance speech. I wish I could say that it looks like a knock-out, but if these are any indication, we can expect the same sort of buzz-word loaded stuff we hear on the campaign trail. Here's the acceptance part: So tonight, in the city where America's freedom began, only a few blocks from where the sons and daughters of liberty gave birth to our nation--here tonight, on behalf of a new birth of freedom--on behalf of the middle class who deserve a champion, and those struggling to join it who deserve a fair shot --for the brave mmen and women in uniform who risk their lives every day and the families who pray for their return--for all those who believe that our best days are ahead of us--for all of you--with great faith in the American people, I accept your nomination for President of the United States.

More than out BOSTON--After a week of nary a queer word from the convention podium, tonight is sounding like gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered night, at least until the networks tune in during primetime. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank just gave a real rip-roaring speech, in which he took to task his colleagues in the House who set aside the nation's business--funding homeland security and countless other vital national programs--to take up the unconscionable federal marriage amendment to the Constitution. The GOP amendemtn effort becomes especially cynical when you add in the fact that the Republicans knew they couldn't win the three-quarters victory they needed in the Senate, but they wasted the people's time on it anyway in order to have a flag to wave before their charming base. Buzz is that Barney Frank may go for Kerry's vacated Senate seat should the latter Massachusettan (dig that word!) wind up in the White House. Said Frank to a gathering of gay Dem...

The tyranny of the post BOSTON--The swell thing about blogging is that you can do whatever you want, with no pesky editor telling you that your ideas are cockamamie. The frustrating thing about blogging is that all the decisions are up to you, and there's no pesky editor there to tell you when your ideas really are cockamamie, or when your prose has run off the rails. In an environment such as this convention, the pressure to post is extremely high. Blogs are, after all, said to be the running commentary on this event. Combine the tyranny of the post with the tedium of relentless self-promotion (tune up those violins) and what was always a narcissistic medium becomes a cult of one--one's own personality that is, or at the very least, of the persona in which one blogs. Exhausted from e-mailing each little gem from her blog to tout le monde , sick of her self-consciously arch blogstress persona, unsure that there was really anything left to say about this confab, Addie actually...