The un-Democratic Convention in Chicago
We’d seen blood soaked images of defenseless protestors and rioting police before, but this wasn’t black and white… it was white on white… in the center of America’s heartland. On TV that night, in his speech nominating George McGovern, Senator Ribicoff denounced the “Gestapo tactics on the streets of Chicago” as Mayor Daley cursed him from the floor and Hubert Humphrey won the party’s nomination on the first ballot. A televised testament to political corruption, like watching a prizefight, all the time knowing ‘the fix’ was in. And we’d seen reporters caught up in a mêlée before, but never the entire mainstream press, intimidated and beaten as they pointed fingers in disbelief at the hijacking of the democratic process. This one event, more than any other, would change the media’s coverage of government and its officials, no longer editing, but now focusing on misconduct and stupidity, epitomized by the repeated airing of Mayor Daley’s defensive press conference misstatement: “The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder!”