Norman Soloman, Delegate in Denver "Unpacking"

I was moved by Michelle's speech and more...Below, Norman Soloman writes about his rush of emotion as Kennedy enters stage and speaks...Soon I want to list all that Kennedy has done for the disenfranchised and how he may yet be able to assist Obama in January and sooner...

Unpacking The Sights and Sounds of Opening Night Norman Soloman Posted on Common Dreams

Entering the huge convention hall, a rush of color and sound launched all sorts of imagery and connotations. There are umpteen potential mixes of political allegiance, antipathy and ambivalence, but this facet of the American political mythos -- the national convention -- remains alive, through all the orchestration and ultra-made-for-TV programming.

While I moved toward the vertical standard of the California delegation, a push-pull of emotions swept me up, history concentric with my own memories.

To the melodic treacle of "Sweet Caroline" -- who the hell gets to inflict that sort of soundtrack on the body politic? -- Caroline Kennedy walked on stage. By the time she voiced a reference to her father, I found that I wasn't immune from the passions of the amphitheater.

Yes, I know, Camelot was largely a mirage, a media concoction that masked deadly counterinsurgencies in tandem with support for vicious dictators from Central America to Africa to Asia. I can talk long and loudly about the lethal deceptions behind the JFK myth. I grew up on them. And a reality was that those myths were intertwined with valuable kinds of idealism.

We believed in ideals of truth, justice and the American way, with a kind of faith in Uncle Sam as Superman. The war on Vietnam and much more would dash the faith, for anyone who was paying attention. Reality, to the extent we were alert, trumped Camelot in the way that a real life decimates Hollywood artifice.

And yet, here in late August of 2008, the convention hall shook with emotions that had some genuine epicenters. And Caroline Kennedy's reference to her father, John F. Kennedy, couldn't be blown off as simply theatrics.

I wondered, minutes later, what political calculus was involved with selecting the music between acts, for instance the song with the danceable and danced-to refrain "Have a funky good time." I think it's accurate to say that African-American culture, widely mainstreamed while routinely watered down by mass media, has had particular impact on young Americans, those now in their first two or three decades of life, and it has at least lessened racism among that cohort of whites. Without those cultural impacts, the heavy youth vote for Obama last winter and spring would not have weighed in so heavily, and he wouldn't be the Democratic Party's nominee.

The energy inside every national Democratic convention I've been to -- starting with the 1988 showdown between Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson, when white guy Dukakis pointedly noted that a team could have only one quarterback, a racially charged comment at the time -- has always to some degree attested to the key role of blacks in electoral successes of the party. But this time, Obama's presence at the top of the ticket has put the party's black base -- by far its most reliable -- in a position that is, so to speak, indisputably integrated into the public imagery of Democratic leadership. Whatever the current realities of corporate power and the terrible intersections of racial bias and economic injustice, the symbols have arrived. No wonder some of the dancing in the aisles seemed so heartfelt and reflective of something happening in this country among people of color in general and most especially among American Americans: Maybe it's time to have a good time, funky or otherwise.

From the slight elevation of the California delegation's seats, it was quite possible to see CNN's A-Team at live work on the edge of the floor, lit up in bright lights and led by Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper. They were intermittently talking on-camera and prepping on how to explain what it all meant.

What it all meant included the wide perception that Camelot is not dead, that the Kennedy mystique still can have strong impacts, especially with people of my generation, born in the couple of decades just after World War Two. While the big convention hall shook with programmed music and bounced along with medium-grade speeches, my mind wandered, a bit dejected by the pandering yet also reminding myself that in just over two months we'll end up with either John McCain or Barack Obama as president-elect. Every internal discourse wound up at approximately the same place: We're at a crossroads that can never be retraced after the fact. We will live with the consequences, so will the world, so will humanity. Not being especially optimistic about the likely results of the election, I was not having a funky good time.

But at the end of every speech, as Blitzer and Cooper and the hot-lit pundits held forth, I was left with a set of emotions that contradicted one of the themes of the night yet supported a central message of the Obama campaign. Appropriately, we were told from the rostrum that the politics of fear should give way to the politics of hope. Yet my antipathy and, yes, fear in relation to McCain and the forces he represents far outweigh the hope that I have about the progressive qualities likely to infuse an Obama administration at the top. Sometimes fear is rational and appropriate. The catastrophe of a McCain presidency must be averted, and the only way to do that will be to get out the vote for Obama.

Sometimes, key aspects of what is authentic and vital -- in this case, the aspirations and possibilities for progressive change -- require extraneous and even superficial packaging. The convention has plenty of that kind of packaging: so that even when some real messages begin to resonate, the contrived and packaged aspects put real limits on my enthusiasm.

I felt genuine powerful emotion only once on Monday night inside the convention: When Ted Kennedy walked slowly and shakily onto the stage and began to speak, the historical moment went deep. "It is so wonderful to be here," he said, and it was unclear and irrelevant whether he was referring only to the 2008 Democratic National Convention or also to life itself. Battling the aftermath of his brain tumor, Kennedy was irrefutable with his own presence as he spoke of health care -- "a human right, not a privilege."

Overall, from the podium Monday night, there was way too much dreaminess and airy evocation of aspirations. But when Ted Kennedy said "this is a season of hope" and insisted with his curtailed but radiant voice that "the dream still lives on," we were left to carry on as he began a slow last exit from the stage.