The end of an error

I’m over stimulated. It's been a really long day: euphoric and nervous and long and hot and exciting and now exhausted and sunburned. The Times already changed their march headline three times, most recently from, something like "Hundreds of thousands protest GWB" to "Vast Anti-Bush Rally Greets Republicans in New York," because everyone is scared of numbers. Well, there were hundreds of thousands of people there, all peaceful and positive despite this being the hottest day in the last month and the fact that some of us didn't move even a block for over 2 hours.
I got home and showered and then went to watch the Video Music Awards, which I won't apologize for. The show sucked, due entirely to the absence of Britney, Madonna, or some other up-and-coming substitute who could have done something, anything of the slightest bit of interest.
What was most noticeable about it was MTV’s continuing commitment to non-partisanship and an appearance by both the Kerry girls and Bush twins exhorting people to vote. Re the first- MTV’s non-partisan stand. I find it incredibly infuriating. I can understand that a TV network has an obligation to neutrality. What infuriates me about MTV is that it remains neutral not due to some greater sense of journalistic/ MTVistic integrity but only because they don't want to alienate any of their audience. And while this is and “should” be the guiding principal of any and every successful television station, I'd be willing to bet almost everyone who has anything to do with MTV is a Democrat and I just wish they'd have some damn balls about it. And, while musicians have the same concerns about alienation, it’s a little surprising to me that no one said a word about taking sides, just about voting (except, of course, for Ad-roc who sported a very quiet anti-W pin). I wonder if they were asked not to.
But maybe I’m wrong about MTV’s politics. The Kerry girls, after all, were booed. Maybe because they were in Miami, and the crowd was mostly Republican, or maybe because they were in Miami and the crowd was mostly 14 and really, really annoyed that someone was holding up Hillary Duff's appearance. The second is a real possibility. The audience couldn’t seem to shut up for anything, except to wave the Virgin mobile phones they’d been handed in a crazy bit of product placement. And then Mary-Kate and Ashley’s surprise appearance (NYU is in the midst of orientation) made at least one member of the audience break out in tears: MK & Ash, the Michael Jackson of the tween generation.
The booing of the Kerry girls, who were saying nothing particularly partisan, and who were joined by the Bush twins via satellite, was also disheartening because it reminds me that America is not NYC, and though it felt like almost everyone in the city was protesting this afternoon, that doesn't mean the majority of America agrees with us. And even though the march was peaceful and we didn't "play into Republican hands" by scaring the rest of America with our anarchic tendencies, it may not have mattered at all. The front page of USA Today doesn't say a word about the march: it does say Bush is now ahead in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.