Democratic Convention Review: Bill Clinton Gets Married, Lena Dunham Gets Personal
The second day of the Democratic convention in Philadelphia was the one that gave Hillary Clinton the formal, roll-called nomination as the Democratic Party’s official candidate. Bernie Sanders, in a symbolic gesture of appeasement, was the person who asked that Clinton be voted in by acclamation, but the cable news TV cameras couldn’t wait to cut to the teary faces of Bernie supporters still needing a safe space to come to terms with the fact that their man didn’t win.
The headliner of the night was the husband of the candidate. Former President Bill Clinton told a long, winding story of his courtship of Hillary Rodham, their marriage, and his nonstop respect for her. It was a rambling tale, with Bill talking in a manner that crossed his usual early-Elvis mode with Andy Griffith’s Sheriff Andy Taylor, and I liked its shaggy-dog quality mostly because I figured Bill was giving ABC, CBS, and NBC conniption fits for filling up a big chunk of their paltry hourlong coverage.
Bill Clinton’s political bottom line was that of the two candidates for president now, “one is real, the other is made up,” referring to Donald Trump (although not by name) as “a cartoon … two-dimensional.”
On the celebrity front, Meryl Streep was pushed out of prime time by Bill’s overtime swoon; once the Oscar winner appeared, the networks scurried away to commercial breaks and wedged-in analysis, thus missing Streep’s repeated use of the phrase “grit and grace” to describe Hillary and comparing Clinton to everyone from Eleanor Roosevelt to Amelia Earhart.
After that intro, I thought Clinton might come soaring into the Philadelphia convention site in a Peter Pan–style flying rig. But, no, she had her own idea of a better visual: a mosaic of every American president breaking like glass to reveal Hillary, beaming in red as she was beamed into the convention. If the gesture lacked subtlety (all male presidents; breaking glass ceiling), it worked as a crowd pleaser, especially with the lead-in provided by Alicia Keys, whose three-count-’em-three songs set the stage for Clinton’s entrance.
Earlier in the evening, Elizabeth Banks had made an entrance similar to Trump’s WWE-style “We Are the Champions” one. More aggressive was the duo of Lena Dunham and America Ferrera, who chanted “We’re for Hillary” in unison. The Girls star-creator opened with the line, “I’m Lena Dunham, and according to Donald Trump, my body is probably, like, a 2,” and Ferrera followed that with, “I’m America Ferrera, and according to Donald Trump, I’m probably a rapist” — even though, as both immediately acknowledged, Ferrera is not from Mexico. Another almost-but-not-quite punchline from the duo was that Donald Trump isn’t making America great again, “He’s making America hate again.” “Again”? What previous era of American hate were Ferrera and Dunham referring to?
Dunham introduced herself as “a pro-choice, feminist, sexual-assault survivor with a chronic reproductive illness,” and you can bet the audience members more or less froze into silence as they unpacked that phrase to give it the respect they were quick to assume merited sobriety in the midst of this enthusiastic gathering. Ferrera scored a solid response with her own autobiography, noting that, as the daughter of immigrants from Honduras, “I occasionally needed a free meal to get through the school day” — a thus-far rare suggestion from either convention that the term “free meal” isn’t a phrase of, or meriting, derision.
