I'm looking out over the Platte Valley, the scene of so much celebration last week. Invesco Field at Mile High, which filled with a record crowd for Barack Obama's speech accepting the Democratic nomination for president. The Pepsi Center, where politicos and stars and Joe Citizens gathered to conduct the business of the Democratic Party. And beyond that facility, the hotels and bars and restaurants where the real business was conducted. The Democratic National Convention was a heck of a party.
And now it's over.
"I'm concerned about Denver right now," comic Mo Rocca said on CBS' Sunday Morning August 31. "For almost a year, that hot-shot big spender known as The Media lavished attention on the DNC's host city, telling Denver it was the most important city in the world, sweeping the Mile High City even higher off its feet."
Rocca was one of those who wooed the city, popping into town to cut confetti with Mayor John Hickenlooper for a pre-convention piece on Denver, the city that had lasted hosted a political convention in 1908. But a week ago today, the circus moved on to the Twin Cities, leaving Denver behind like Brigadoon, that mythical Scottish town that only comes to life every hundred years.
And coverage of the Republican National Convention, that Palinpalooza, has finished the job of wiping Denver off the media map.
"Yes, Denver, another convention will come along," Rocca reassured us. "And if it doesn't, so be it: It is better to have loved and lost national media attention than to have never had any Media at all."
Read his full essay here. -- Patricia Calhoun
