The oligarchs are coming! The oligarchs are coming!

Up, down. Up, down. Billboards, signs, graffitti and even jumbotrons with opposition messages have become part of the spectacle soon to take place in the Twin Cities. The Daily Show and many other entities have an early and looming presence here as my hometown, St. Paul, plays "host" to the RNC whose convention runs Sept. 1-4. Brian at east-lake.net posted the DS welcoming shot.

The Union of Concerned Scientists had anti-nuke billboards up at the Minneapolis and Denver airports to greet conventioneers but Clear Channel, with whom UCS had contracted for the displays, caved to pressure from Northwest Airlines (official RNC airline) which called the billboards "scary." The Minneapolis ad was also called "anti-McCain" by NWA.

I agree that nuclear wars are very scary -- and so is censorship.

The closer the convention gets, the more I tend to agree with Eric Stoner, one of the co-founders of the RNC Flight Crew, a group organizing a mass exodus of citizens prior to the convention. As Stoner told Minneapolis writer Rich Broderick:

“Essentially, the Republican National Convention – like the Democratic National Convention – is nothing more than an empty spectacle, a perfect reflection of the empty spectacle of a consumer culture that has commodified every aspect of life, including politics,” Stoner claims. “Nothing of note, or even of minor news value, is going to occur at the Xcel Center during that time.”

But despite that, he says, “The RNC is going to attract a swarm of 15,000 media people and tens of thousands of demonstrators, all of them drawn like moths to the flame by the chance to be part of the spectacle – and hence make themselves feel as if they are ‘real.’ As far as we are concerned, everyone involved in the debacle is part of, rather than a solution to, the stupidity of the society in which we live.”

“What,” he asks, “can any sane person do except run away from this kind of craziness?”