Meanwhile in Denver

Unfortunately, no one from the Daily Iowan is in Denver to cover the Democratic convention and the antics surrounding it. But plenty of other journalists are--and the Internet allows me to direct you to their work, so that's what I'll do throughout the week.

Continuing its involvement with political coverage this election season, Google provides a number of ways to check up on events in Denver this week and in Minneapolis later on. Check out the numerous interesting political links on Google's corporate blog if you want in on the action.

For some insightful criticism of the protesters outside the convention, check out this post by Eli Sanders:

It occurred to me during a cold shower yesterday—a nice way to cool off when it’s in the 90s here in Denver, and a good place to hide out and think when you’re crashing in a tiny apartment that’s quickly becoming a journalist tenement—that the DNC protesters must not have been watching the Democratic primaries.

The entire protest movement here is organized under the rubric of “Recreate ‘68,” no doubt meant to evoke a certain nostalgia for a time when hippies and other anti-war protesters famously confronted the Democratic party establishment in Chicago over the Vietnam War and the lack of openness in the convention process at the time. On the plane here I was reading an old photocopied magazine clipping from 1968 that Annie Wagner pulled out of a drawer at her Seattle apartment the other night. It’s Esquire magazine’s take on the 1968 protests and police violence, written by Jean Genet, William Burroughs, Terry Southern, and John Sack. It’s an amazing collection of work, and it’s quite possible that a lot of the younger “Recreate ‘68”-ers here in Denver have no idea who most of those writers are—which is part of the point they’re missing.

Also via Slog, here's an entertaining clip of protesters interacting with a Fox News reporter (warning: profanity abounds):



Unsurprisingly, both the protesters and Fox News reporter come across as jerks. But the reporter's assertion that the protesters don't believe in free speech is pretty stupid. Of course they do--that's why they're so happy to suggest that some unspecified person or group of people have intercourse with the Fox network.

Not all free speech is intelligent speech, as both Fox News and wacky leftist protesters demonstrate on a regular basis.