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Joshua Foer

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Posted Wednesday, Aug. 16, 2000, at 9:00 PM ET

It is only Day Two of the convention, and already the excitement of being in the Staples Center is wearing thin. By now, my job in security feels mundane. Getting onto the floor has lost most of its exhilaration, and seeing famous people walk by no longer makes me giddy. Just this evening John McLaughlin, Tom Arnold, and Dianne Feinstein passed by me in the main corridor in close succession without my so much as turning my head. And to make matters worse, my coveted earpiece and cuff microphone, which had lent me an air of importance during the pre-convention week, are now as common as those "Lick Bush" shirts; they have been given to every credential-checking volunteer.

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So when I had my first break from work this afternoon I decided that, rather than walking the 300 yards from the security trailer to the Staples Center to listen in on the presentation of the party's platform, I would travel the shorter distance around the security fence that separates the trailer from the protesters. Though the big organized demonstration of the afternoon had not yet assembled, there was a scattering of individual and group protests all around Olympic Boulevard near the convention's pedestrian entrance.

One woman held a sign that said, "Danger: Electromagnetic Waves Control Minds." The man next to her tried to convince me that the Children's Protection Services Agency is actually a front for a worldwide child-pornography and prostitution ring and that John Ramsey is not only responsible for the death of JonBenet but also for the deaths dozens of young girls in Atlanta.

Across the sidewalk, a man dressed in sandals and a white robe and bearing a big cross on his shoulder was leaning against a concrete police barricade. He said that he'd had no intention of coming down to the Staples Center this morning, but that God had spoken to him and told him he would have to cancel his plans and make an appearance. Standing just to the left of the Jesus figure stood a bearded man in a hat protesting the commercialization of Auschwitz by the Polish government, particularly the building of fast-food restaurants on and nearby the grounds of the death camp. I asked him whether building restaurants nearby might not be such a bad thing if they made it easier for more people to visit the memorial. He took offense at my question. "Anyone who would have an appetite after visiting a death camp is a Nazi. Even if he's a Jew," he said, and then he stormed off.

At a nearby intersection, a group of Bible thumpers was squaring off in a bullhorn shouting match against—I kid you not—the Citizens Against Breast-Feeding.

I had to ask each of the protestors representing Citizens Against Breast-Feeding a couple times whether their demonstration was a joke before I was ready to accept that it was for real. According to John, a twentysomething man with tattoos running up and down his arms and earrings in both ears, the moral decay in our society can be traced back to the incestuous act of breast-feeding. From a pamphlet John gave me:

Monica Lewinsky's oral gratification received from President Clinton had a direct relationship to her demented childhood slurping mother's milk. Just ask any psychologist.

Another John, this one a retired veteran wearing a "Stop Breast-Feeding Now" T-shirt, told me that he blames our culture's addiction to smoking on the oral fixation that comes from breast-feeding. A different flier given to me by the second John says that more than 200,000 American citizens have signed a petition urging Congress to declare breast-feeding illegal. I can't help but wonder which of my friends and neighbors have signed.