Razor Wire & PR

By Joshuah Bearman, LA Weekly. Posted July 26, 2004.

Editors note: This is the second in a series of insightful yet humorous dispatches from the DNC. Read Josh Bearman's first dispatch here. Or to read all dispatches – large and small – as they're posted, go here.

Somewhere inside the Fleet Center is a guy I haven't met named Don Mischer. I've been trying to reach him for 10 days since he's the Executive Producer of the convention. Like the Academy Awards, the convention is a live broadcast event that has to be organized over many months by such a person. The DNC hired Mischer because he's a Democrat and knows how to put on a show. Mischer, in fact, has been the go-to guy for the Emmys for the past eight years, where he not only runs the operation but has also gone on stage to accept awards 13 times himself.

Fans of live spectaculars might also recognize his flair for ceremony from the opening and closing events at the Salt Lake City Olympics, Barbara Streisand's Millennium Concert in Las Vegas, the re-unification of Hong Kong and China, and Motown's Twenty-fifth Anniversary in 1983. His events have been hailed by the Washington Post and the New York Times with such approbations as "a stunningly beautiful pageant," "extravagant and enthralling," and, in the case of Motown 25, as "an important historical footnote" by me because I happen to know that the only white dude considered cool enough to perform alongside the Motown greats was Adam Ant. Not only that, rumor has it that Michael Jackson was very impressed by Adam Ant's deconstructed ancien regime getup, reminding us, yet again, how revolutionary the Ant was in the Prince Charming Revue days.

About the convention, Don Mischer seemed the best source. He's the person who developed the floor plan, set up the stage, arranged the cameras, and is still at this moment outlining how the performance will unfold. And that's the central story, really, more so than the politics of the upcoming week, of which there are none. The most recent multiple ballot at either convention was 1952. Twenty years after that, Miami, saw the last moment of procedural frisson, when the McGovernites arranged some arcane move involving a thrown vote by the South Carolina delegation that I've read about several times but have yet to fully comprehend. Even then, McGovern had it sewed up; the South Carolina maneuver was more of a coup de grace. There have been no surprises since. At that time the nominee still had to pick a running mate, but now that's done well in advance. Likewise, the platform today is unimportant. No one reads it, and any wrinkles are ironed out quietly, a week or two ahead of time, well away from the glare of the lights and network cameras.

What remains are the speeches and the syrupy bio-pic of the nominee, and only three primetime hours of network coverage for the Party to present that to the country. Meaning what's left of this political tradition are a few pages of well-chosen words and some stagecraft.

The DNC, however, doesn't want to reinforce the impression that their convention is a carefully scripted television extravaganza, so they're not so interested in having people talk to Don Mischer about how he's bringing that Hollywood touch to Boston.

Either that or DNC is in complete disarray. I've called their press offices around 50 times, half of that in the past two days, and you can hear the sounds of organizational mayhem in the background. I've been transferred to dozens of different people, none of whom seem to be able make any decisions. A few times the phone was picked up by someone I'd already talked to, merely hours before, and they remembered nothing from that conversation.

They were mostly very nice, though, which is the rule of political "communications": say nothing with a smile. In all public relations, a friend in the field confided (she currently works for the DNC but not in the capacity to hook me up with Mischer), politeness is a defense mechanism. Be nice to everyone, she said, even the lowliest person who cannot now help your boss/client/organization – because you don't want to offend someone who may later achieve power and be in a position to fuck you over. "Or," she added, "you have to be equally mean and nasty to everyone – like hot-shot publicists in the city." (That would be New York City.) "But you have to make that choice early."

Joshuah Bearman is a regular contributor for the LA Weekly.

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