The American Spectator

She sighed and turned away.

Moments later, I saw Michael Moore walking nearby.

“Hey, Mike!” I shouted. “Can you help a journalist get out of the ‘Free Press Zone’?”

Moore looked over, vaguely confused, and turned back to resume his conversation with Danny Glover.

The marshal turned to me and told me she didn’t want trouble, but if forced, she would get a NYPD officer.

Soon after, I noticed Marisa Tomei standing right next to the marshal, tearing up at Congressman Charles Rangel’s nonsensical address to the crowd. I started to call out to her, but the marshal got in the line of sight and glared. A writer for Liberation likewise gave me a nasty look. Tomei sauntered over to greet Vagina Monologues writer Eve Ensler.

I tried to explain to the marshal: “I wasn’t going to bother her about politics. I just wanted to tell her how much I loved, My Cousin Vinny and ask her what Joe Pesci was really like.”

Nothing. So I turned my attention to the preachifying.

“We already won!” a New York City Councilman told the crowd. “There’s already been more coverage of the protests than there has been of the convention.”

Moments later, he said that last year America needed “regime change here, not in Iraq.”

Leslie Cagan, the national coordinator for United for Peace and Justice, distilled the Republican platform down to one simple line — “war, greed, hate, and lies” — before Congressman Major Owens lightened things up with a short explanation on how America was becoming “a snake pit of fascism.”

Then Jesse Jackson showed up, but when I realized he wouldn’t be giving a talk about the South Beach diet, I decided to go see what I could find on the fringes.

THE REST OF THE day was a bit of a blur. Here are a few observations from my five hours of marching:

Fox News is now hated more than George W. Bush. “Fox News Sucks” and “Fascist News Network” were both chants I heard more often than any anti-Bush screed. When I was writing down the chant, a dirty hippie in a “We are all Palestinians” shirt kept looking over my shoulder demanding I write “Fascist News” in my notes.

The young women in the anti-Bush group Code Pink are confused and demented. One of them, who should be arrested for cruelty to animals, dyed her small dog pink and made him walk down Broadway. Others wore buttons: “No War On My Sisters in Iraq, Iran, Syria, or North Korea.” You know, those havens of equal rights for all.