BEYOND CONVENTIONAL BEHAVIOR

IN THIS, the summer of our disconnectedness, Al Gore and George W.
Bush would do well to keep their eyes on Arianna Huffington. She knows
how to find the spotlight at a political convention. Her position
outside the convention halls, near the anarchists and turtle huggers,
doesn't bode well for the major presidential candidates.

When I first met Huffington, it was at the 1994 California Republican
Convention, when she was the model of the dutiful political wife while
her then-husband Michael Huffington self-financed a $50 million run
against Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Michael was dull, while Arianna was anything but. When I asked her why
she wasn't running for office herself, she waved her hand at the
polyester-clad Republicans from Orange County and said, "I don't know
any of these people."

By the 1996 Republican National Convention, everyone knew Arianna on a
first-name basis. She had become an inside outsider, a syndicated
columnist and comedic TV commentator paired with Al Franken. She was
at all the best parties.

This year, we can count on Arianna not only being at the best parties,
but she'll be throwing better conventions than the Republicans and
Democrats, called "shadow conventions."

Arianna knows where the action is, and it'll be outside the convention
halls in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. That's where real issues, and
not just applause lines, will come up.

I don't know why organizers use the word "shadow," because the TV
lights will be on those conventions. The likes of Sen. John McCain
(and, gee, maybe even Warren Beatty) will be talking about real issues
like poverty, the drug war and campaign finance reform.

The whole world might be watching, especially if windows and heads are
broken during demonstrations by anti-corporate activists and
well-organized anarchists.

You know the whole world won't be watching the carefully staged
coronations of Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Bush is acting so royal that he isn't even showing up until the third
day of the Republican Convention. His acceptance speech is reportedly
in its fifth draft even though it won't be given until August 3.

That's how spontaneous political conventions are. Well, I guess it
takes time to get a speech down to easily pronounceable one-syllable
words.

Give me a guy in a turtle suit over George W. any old
time.

The groups planning protests of the conventions have disavowed
violence. That includes Huffington and her shadow conventioneers, as
if anyone can imagine her trashing a Starbucks. She said that her
group did share with other protesters "a sense of being shut out of
the system."

It's hard to believe that this socialite, syndicated columnist and TV
personality is shut out of anything. But all the best people are shut
out. To be in, you have to donate big bucks to sleep in the Lincoln
Bedroom, and that's beyond tacky.

Authorities in Los Angeles and Philadelphia want to shut the
protesters as far out of the Democratic and Republican conventions as
possible. Cops have been preparing for war in the streets.

All this bodes well for the media, which would love to have some
action on the order of Chicago '68 or Seattle '99. A good riot could
get higher ratings than "Survivor." Bush and Gore will get killed by
the nation's collective remote.

As it is, the networks are squeezing convention coverage into half
times of pre-season football games.

The public tunes out of politics for good reason. They have been shut
out, focus-grouped and polled senseless. They've been fed nonsense and
lies, and as Ralph Nader says, there is essentially one party, the
Republicrats, governed by corporate contributors.

Many of the people in the streets of Philadelphia and Los Angeles will
come for one issue, whether it's saving forests, saving American jobs,
saving Mumia or saving American democracy from big money.

At least they have beliefs. Inside the conventions, people come to
speak pap for power. Also, they get to wear really stupid hats.

We have two parties committed to spending our money on schemes to stop
imaginary space-borne threats from Third World countries, funding a
war in Colombia because of our own problems with drugs, and
maintaining an economy that tends to divide the nation into gated
communities and ghettos.

And the candidates are spending their time tuning their wardrobes and
images. George W. is going to be the first nominee in history to
deliver his acceptance speech without a podium.

"Of such earth-shattering decisions are legends and memories made,"
wrote Arianna Huffington in a recent column about Bush, who had
described himself as "a good decider."

No grammar, no brains, no podium. The only thing missing is no
clothes, but that would liven things up too much.

No wonder people would rather watch yuppies eat rat meat on a desert
island than watch a convention.