By Victoria Rose Comella is a junior English major
Every four years on the first Tuesday of November, there’s the possibility of starting a new relationship. After four years you’ve reached the make or break point and you need to make a decision.
And what better way to help your decision along than the biggest bash of the year.
The relationship I’m speaking of is with your President and the bash is none other than the much talked about Democratic and Republican conventions.
There has been so much talk about the DNC coming to Beantown that I’m beginning to wonder what the point of all the hype is to begin with. The DNC is taking over the FleetCenter at the end of July and while our elected officials keep talking about how the spotlight will be shining on our great city, I think that shine is really a dull haze.
The city is shutting down the T (which doesn’t run efficiently on a good day) and will be a louder, slower, jam-packed place of exhaustive hell for roughly a week. Security is ascending to a whole new level as IDs are being checked and bags are being searched. That doesn’t even begin to take account of all the various roads being blocked off to traffic.
After hours of long and grueling speeches, victorious fist shakes and a downpour of balloons and streamers, we’re supposed to decide which guy is for us. Therefore we commit to a long-term relationship for the next four years; unless something tragic happens, which is why we vote for a back-up date as well.
But do we really need all the fancy stuff? Don’t we know already who we like and who we don’t — who we’re going to call back and to whom we’re going to say, “I’m sorry, I’m already seeing someone else?”
Do we need four days of frustration and schedule reversal and being late to work, and long rides on the T in this city to make that decision? As the Democrats begin to roll in and take over Boston, I can’t help but wonder: Has the novelty of all that is the “national convention” finally worn off?
Looking back on it, the roots of both the Democratic and Republican conventions make sense. In a time when there wasn’t The O’Reilly Factor, NBC Nightly News and Meet the Press, the convention was the only outlet where candidates could speak to the public, rally for support and gain the good opinion of the voting populous. Today in a world bombarded by media coverage, the conventions are really just one big party for the Democrats and Republicans and a chance to yell and cheer for the fact that they are, indeed, Democrats and Republicans.
I would rather see the performance-wielding politicians throw the rhetoric out the window and actually take heed to the wants and needs of the inconvenienced citizens whose hands the election is in.
Yet, it’s difficult to break out of the mold of something created roughly 172 years ago, but times have changed. Andrew Jackson wasn’t shutting down Philadelphia for a week making it difficult for people to get home to their air-conditioned apartments. Does anyone realize how long the line at downtown Starbucks’ is going to be in the morning? Perhaps Kerry should explain to my boss that I can’t function until roughly 11 a.m. without my daily venti latte.
At this point I want to tell these DNC’ers to go pitch a tent in northern Maine and have themselves a blast.
Leave us be.
But, as much as I wish the DNC would disappear, I have to remind myself that no one would get into a relationship without at least seeing first how the other person handles a few celebratory drinks. So maybe that’s where the real cream will rise, making it easier for the more important decisions to be made, like forgetting about all of this and just voting for Nader.
