Time was, a conscientious reporter could travel to a convention, study the proceedings, interview the delegates, calibrate their controversies, absorb the party’s message, filter it through to a waiting nation, and get ripped.
Getting ripped was the fun part.
No longer. The nation’s press corps has changed. Here is the chief complaint about accommodations among the hacks in San Diego: Owing to security concerns, the gym at the media hotel, the Marriott, was closed. It was a painful adjustment, as the country’s finest political reporters wondered how they would manage to exercise their First Amendment rights without their morning workout on the Butt Buster.
So there were no morning workouts, but the larger irony was that the reporters had nothing to work out every morning. The paralyzing press hangover seems to be a thing of the past.
The convention’s opening gala for the press, generously sponsored by the Copley newspaper chain, featured towering heaps of sumptuous food, fabulous fireworks, loud music, and — no open bars. A little beer, a little wine, champagne, some sweet punch with a thimbleful of tequila, and a poorly attended promotional booth sponsored by Stolichnaya — but none of the gut- barrel bourbon and bathtub gin craved by the ink-stained, sozzled hacks of the past.
The other big media party, sponsored by chi-chi George magazine, was even more hopeless. The San Diego Zoo setting was darkly exotic, though serving mystery-meat burgers next to empty animal cages was a disconcerting touch. Pretty women dressed in black sashayed coyly around the host, editor- in-chief John Kennedy, and third-tier movie star Billy Baldwin caused some rubber-necking. But not much. And again the earmark of the nineties press corps: a little beer, a little wine, lots of soda pop. But no bar. Even Norman Mailer wasn’t imbibing! The era of big drinking is over.
