Steve Brodner's Liveblog of the GOP Convention (1)

From The Nation.

I’ve covered many political conventions over the years. They are hard to forget, but sometimes I think it would be a good idea.
Today, conventions seem to be about very little. They mostly exist as a fancy feast for fat cats and the creatures of the media-industrial complex.

They hold the country’s attention for the better part of a week, but without really having anything new or very revealing to say!

So why is it a good idea for an artist to cover them? Because we do very well with BS. We know how to sift through it and find stuff you can use. In fact, we find it nourishing.

So for the next week we will focus on Tampa, which happens to be about eighty-four miles from Walt Disney World… and is, very possibly, now an even greater Fantasyland.

Like many protesters I will be confined to a specially designated area (in my case in an uncredentialed apartment house in New York). But with enough pizza and beer I expect to be able to see Tampa and Charlotte from my house.

For the conventions I will be posting regularly on my live blog on TheNation.com, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr, producing my dignified art. These characters, though, pretty much draw themselves.

What if we thought of the candidates as mash-ups of personalities and archetypes? So who would Paul Ryan, for example, be a mash-up of? Perhaps Howdy Doody meets Arnold Schwarzenegger?

And Mitt Romney? Maybe Gordon Gekko meets Mr. Bean.

So check out my flowing clustermashorama for the weeks of both conventions. The liveblog begins Monday, August 27. Grovel-to-grovel coverage. Going Koch to Koch. At my blog on TheNation.com.