July 27, 2004

DNC Nihilism

I feel nothing. Not interest. Not boredom. Not even contempt. Nothing.

I want to feel something. I want to get pissed off. I want to care what Jimmy Carter looks like up close and personal.

Is irony an emotion? I want to feel that, but I don't.

I wish I could find some perverse hillarity in it all. Nothing about this is funny. At the same time, it's not un-funny either.

Forget doing parodies. There is nothing to make fun of. Nothing worthwhile is being said. It's worse than that, there is nothing un-worthwhile being said either. The convention is not happening to me. It is not there and no one is writing about it.

I feel nothing.

I don't even care who's blogging whom at the convention.

I thought I felt something for a second when I read this from N.Z. Bear, but I can't be sure. I should be interested in bloggers who blog from the DNC, but I'm not. Is 'yeah, what he said' a valid emotion?

I definitely felt something when I read Simon's post on the DNC blogging thing. But that was more like solidarity, which I guess counts for something. Maybe.

But on the whole, I feel nothing.

Intellectually, this disturbs me and I know I ought to feel guilty for not giving a rat's ass because one ought to care about such lofty things as democracy and all that jazz. But I don't even feel guilty for that.

I feel nothing. I am an emotional nihilist when it comes to the DNC.

UPDATE: Vindication! Now that is an emotion I am feeling. I knew I wasn't the outlier here. So how come everyone in the blogosphere continues to act as if this is an interesting story or that people actually care?

From Drudge:"THE BIG YAWN: NETWORKS IN RATINGS FREEFALL AT CONVENTION, OPENING NIGHT ALL-TIME LOW"

Posted by: Rusty at 03:22 PM | Comments (13) | Add Comment
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1 Funny thing is ... despite my post ... I feel the exact same way. Empty. Bored.

Posted by: Bill from INDC at July 27, 2004 04:10 PM (yZMsp)

2 I almost laughed at your (Bill's) post...but then I didn't have the strength to reach down so low into my emotional well. If there is something funny, it's Baby Jessica deep. Man, I wish I felt something...even the funny!!!!

Posted by: Rusty Shackleford at July 27, 2004 04:18 PM (JQjhA)

3 Well, my strategy is that I don't watch enough of it to deaden my feelings, though I did feel the void appproaching as a watched X Reagan (I can't remember his name) sucking up to Michael Moore. Plus, I manage to entertain the notion that with their legs spread far enough to cover all the positions to the right of George Bush and to the left of Dennis Kucinich one could, if one wanted to, land a whale of an effective kick to the groin. If one wanted to, bad enough.

Posted by: Scott at July 27, 2004 04:24 PM (MBj6F)

4 But how did you find enough interest in the first place. My finger muscles won't even respond to my brain ordering them to click the remote control to any of the news channels.

Posted by: Rusty Shackleford at July 27, 2004 04:28 PM (JQjhA)

5 I died a little inside at every forced applause line of "...and our next president....JOHN! F! KERRY!"

Posted by: Christopher Cross at July 27, 2004 06:19 PM (dHrAg)

6 I just can't bring myself to watch it. How could you die a little if there was nothing there to begin with?

Posted by: RS at July 27, 2004 06:23 PM (JQjhA)

7 So, don't watch the convention. Listen to it instead. If you can catch Hugh Hewitt, do so - I've never heard a man so happy to challenge the Dems on their own ground.

Posted by: ccwbass at July 27, 2004 06:50 PM (qg4dU)

8 To answer your question (with an observation that may or may not be meaningful) I think that bloggers feel like their acceptance to "cover" the conventions has brought them a new level of respectability. Sort of like the 9th grade geek who hits a growth spurt in his senior year and becomes a starter on the football team. "Wow...we're at the convention! With REAL journalists/pundits!!!! What we do is now viewed as cool and meaningful by the chattering elites!!! I knew all those posts about anal sex would pay off!!!!!!"

Posted by: Senator PhilABuster at July 27, 2004 09:13 PM (UHfuz)

9 Yeah, but at least football is interesting. More like the guy who gets the growth spurt and then joins the Bowling team. Yeah, interesting.

Posted by: Rusty Shackleford at July 27, 2004 09:17 PM (JQjhA)

10 It could be sleep deprivation - so maybe the convention will do some good after all, by curing that for you.

Posted by: Simon at July 28, 2004 03:26 AM (UKqGy)

11 Well, you must have caught enough of it to know it's boring, and I just haven't seen that much yet. Also, I don't listen to it in a manner designed to make sense. I treat it like abstract art. Happened to catch this snippet from the Kennedy speech where he says Bush is pitting the "cities against the serb_.. serb_... serb_..." and finally manage do eke out the word "suburbs" when I was just sure he was going to say "Serbia." Now you have to admit that a war between "the cities" and Serbia, which is all George Bush's fault, of course, would be a damned interesting charge. Pretty nonsensical, but interesting.

Posted by: Scott at July 28, 2004 04:46 AM (MBj6F)

12 "Intellectually, this disturbs me and I know I ought to feel guilty for not giving a rat's ass because one ought to care about such lofty things as democracy and all that jazz." It's not about Democracy and all that, Dr. Rusty - it's about "BEAT CHIMP-BUSH AT ALL COSTS!!!". And it shows. And that I think is why we can't work up anything about it. We could write the speeches and the speaker lineup by now, and fil in the rhetoric and the media gushing. It's predictable. And parody is only funny when you have to exaggerate to make the jokes. There's no exaggeration in anything we could come up with. That's really why the "I don't get it" from USA Today doesn't draw the snickers it would have 3 years ago... As over the top as it was, Coulter's humour wasn't exaggerating that much. It falls flat of satire and into the "kicking the cripples" stage at this point. ;] Only chuckles I've been getting are from watching The Liberal Party trying desperately to portray themselves as more conservative than Bush. Other than that, it's a yawn. So far, the blogging coming out of there isn't much better. I've almost stopped reading it. [Yes, that *does* mean no wideranging DailySpam! DNC blogging roundups. I hate to bore DailySpam! readers to death.]

Posted by: Ironbear at July 30, 2004 06:24 AM (cswDs)

13 good post, i forwarded it to my friends

Posted by: rent games at November 29, 2004 03:50 PM (BBvrt)

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