Mullings: An American Cyber-column By Rich Galen

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Conventions, Credentials, and Coffee

Rich Galen

Wednesday July 28, 2004

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From Boston, Massachusetts
The Democratic National Convention

Every place you want to go in a Convention City requires a credential. You want to get into the Fleet Center? You need a credential.

You want to go upstairs in the Fleet Center? You need a different credential

You want to go onto the floor of the Fleet Center? You need a different credential, still.

You want to go to a party? Got to have a credential. Each party has its own credential. No credential, you are like a guy in a Nehru jacket trying to get into a hip South Beach club. Ain't happening.

I have a theory that credentials - or more precisely the wearing of credentials - is directly related to where you are in your career.

When you are young, you need to wear all the credentials you can get your hands on because if your peers don't see how many credentials you have, how ever will they understand how many places you are allowed to go, that they are not? Young people at a convention look like walking confetti.
When you are in mid-career you don't want to wear any credentials. You think you should be well enough known - even to a 57-year-old volunteer who gives piano lessons, doesn't have cable, and last voted in 1967 but thought this might be a nice way to meet people - to be able to come and go without being insulted by to stop � every � fifteen � feet.
When you are my age, because I don't want to actually go anyplace - especially after dark - which isn't in the immediate proximity of my bed, my bathroom, and my remote, I have no need for a large collection. You want me to wear a credential? Gimme.

There are exceptions to all rules. Mullpal Juanita Duggan invited me to a party thrown by the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers Association. I didn't have a credential but I got in anyway because Juanita had put me on The List.

Being on The List is even better than having a credential because you walk up to the guy at the door and say, "I'm so-and-so and I'm on The List" and the guy lets you in. That, at a convention, is way cool. Don't ask me why. It just is.

Here's another thing about political conventions: You realize that many, many delegates have not been taken in by all the hype attached to low-carb diets. Inside the Fleet Center there are Dunkin' Donut stands. At the stand on the main floor they were completely out of donuts.

Where do we think all those donuts went? Keereckt! Into the delegates.

Only slightly more vexing than a Dunkin' Donut which has run out of donuts is the Dunkin' Donut stand on the fourth level which doesn't sell donuts at all. Only coffee. Dunkin' Nonuts.

There are about two million talk radio hosts working out of the Fleet Center and there is a pecking order to where they are located. Top o' the line shows are grouped together near that first Dunkin' Donut place. That's where Sean Hannity and Tony Snow broadcast from.

The next level is a tiered affair - still on the main floor - where you will find some of the more liberal hosts like Ellen Ratner and Al Franken (who, by the way, still owes me a lunch from a bet he lost in Iowa in 1999).

The worst location are the stations which operate near that Dunkin' Nonut stand on the fourth level. If you ask people how to get there they tell you to go past - I am not making this up - go past the defibrillators and they'll be on your right.

I need some help: Which do you think is a funnier name for Teresa Heinz Kerry: "Cruella? Or, "Leona?"

On the Secret Decoder Ring Page today: Mullfotos of the empty donut rack, and one of the Mullmeister with Tony Snow.

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