Dancing Delegates, Arnold, and Me

By KAREN WILSON Palisadian-Post Intern Emeritus There were at least two Palisadians present at last week’s Republican National Convention’Arnold Schwarzenegger and me. And while the Governator is actually a former resident who was there serving as a keynote speaker, and I’m a current townie who was busy soaking up her first political event, I will say that as thousands of delegates waved ‘Arnold!’ signs in the air at Madison Square Garden, I felt a touch of local pride. Welcome to the Grand Old Party convention, held this year for the first time in New York City. As an 18-year-old intern at Entertainment Weekly (EW) magazine, I had given politics a backseat to showbiz this summer. Previous to attending the convention, I had only one political event under my belt’a Sean ‘P. Diddy’ Combs press conference, during which the rap magnate unveiled his plans to reach out to young voters. Shortly after 9 p.m. last Monday, I hurried down 34th Street towards the Garden, flashing my press credentials and wishing I were home watching reruns instead of being wanded by security in my too-high heels. I made it to the fifth floor Time magazine workspace, home to all Time Warner media personnel. The Time office, crunched between those of CNN and ‘The News Hour with Jim Lehrer,’ was equipped with several computers, which were being used for online research and photo editing. While Senator John McCain was getting ready to start his speech, I was led upstairs to the sixth floor and entered the arena itself through Gate 64, where foot traffic was at a standstill. Turned out that CNN’s broadcast booth was located just inside, and reporters Wolf Blitzer and Judy Woodruff were on the air. Security came through to keep the crowd moving, and I made my way to the Time magazine area, located about 40 feet to the right of the keynote podium. Immediately, I noticed a bleacher of cameras. Located across the floor from the stage, it rose up from a sea of delegates, supporting television cameramen shoulder-to-shoulder. Every basketball-sized lens was trained on the podium, where McCain would soon stand. Directly underneath the cameras was a giant flat-screened TV monitor, which served as the TelePrompTer. Over the next few days, I kept my focus trained on the PrompTer, trying to spot the places where the politicians went off script. While McCain and Laura Bush kept faithfully to theirs, Schwarzenegger did a little improvising, and Rudy Giuliani went completely off track as the crowd roared its approval. Also of interest to this young reporter was the row of photographers sitting two feet from the podium, snapping shots of the keynotes; when President Bush spoke at the end of the convention, many of them had been replaced by security personnel. Night two was a banner occasion for me, as Laura Bush is an idol of mine, and the aforementioned Gov. Schwarzenegger was to take the stage. During Laura’s speech, the composed First Lady kept one leg bent behind the podium, while the other tapped the floor’whether from nerves or to pace herself, I couldn’t tell. As Arnold stepped out, I looked directly across the floor at his wife, Maria Shriver, and their four children, who sat in an area reserved for political heavyweights like George Prescott Bush and Condoleezza Rice. The delegates on the floor waved blue and white signs (in a fun twist, our town’s official colors) that read ‘Arnold!’ I took delight in noting that the youngest Schwarzenegger son joined in the fun, waving a banner himself. I had two sightings that night, first passing ‘The View’ co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck in the corridor leading to the arena, and, once inside, exchanging smiles with Bob Dole as he left a CNN interview. After he’d passed, I was busy loitering in the aisle, trying to peer up at the back of Larry King’s head as he broadcasted live, when I felt a searing pain in my foot- a Dole staffer, not watching the floor either, had crushed my left toes with his wingtip shoe. Hobbling now, I was almost brought to tears’not by the pain, but by the energy in that hall during the speeches. As Laura had gone through her lines, they had been a roar from the crowd, an energy of togetherness I’d never felt before. It was like the world’s best high school pep rally, but a thousand times better. There I was, on the edge of my seat, realizing that, at age 18, I was a part of something that was Very Big. From George and Barbara Bush holding up hand-painted ‘We Love Laura’ posters, to every ‘Four More Years’ sign being waved by a delegate, there was just something raucous and magical taking place at the Garden. At the end of the night, I reached under a delegate’s seat and snagged an ‘Arnold!’ poster. Exhausted from working all day at EW, I decided to watch day three on television. As Dick Cheney and Zell Miller got the crowd on their feet, I was envisioning the real Garden scene and comparing it to what I was seeing on the screen. On night four, I snagged a half-hour floor pass and put it to use during New York Governor Pataki’s speech. It was prime time and the floor was gridlocked. I stood between the Illinois and Mississippi delegations and looked around. The Virginia delegates had autographed their signpost, while the Hawaiians had affixed a traditional floral wreath to theirs. A Michigan delegate, meanwhile, wore a customized T-shirt that read ‘Kerry Flip-Flops’ against a picture of a Heinz ketchup bottle. As I snapped his photo, I accidentally bumped the woman next to me. As she swung around, I caught the name on her credentials: it was Campbell Brown, co-host of NBC’s ‘Weekend Today.’ Then, I passed right by the heavily guarded seats where the First Family was seated, and snapped a photo. Later, the president’s speech was going smoothly when a flailing protester wearing a sign reading ‘Pink Slip Bush’ was hustled through the press area by security, and, like a modern-day politically-motivated Cinderella, she left behind a leather sandal. Soon, reporters had descended upon the shoe, snapping photos, passing it around, and smirking about the incident. When it’s no longer needed as evidence, look for it on eBay. At 11:05, Bush told the crowd that he owed his blunt persona to ‘the lady up there,’ gesturing to the seat usually occupied by his mother, Barbara. However, she wasn’t actually present during this declaration. Afterwards, balloons and confetti spilled from the ceiling. As people poured from the arena, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell’s ‘Ain’t No Mountain High Enough’ blared. Remaining delegates began dancing as the convention came to an end. Stray balloons floated from the ceiling and I stood at the rail, ringed on all sides by neon signs declaring the presence of NBC News, Bloomberg Media, even Al-Jazeera. I realized that I’d never again follow a convention, or listen to a Cher CD, or watch a nightly news program on television and not think of this moment. It was the perfect time to give my arm a little pinch, and the perfect time to say good night. (Editor’s Note: Palisadian Karen Wilson is still in New York, working hard at Entertainment Weekly, and is looking forward to sophomore year at UC Santa Barbara, which begins later this month.)