Travis LaFrance
At Home in the Halls of Power

We Don't Need No Stinking Badges

Don't believe the naysayers. Credentials in Boston are about as hard to come by as the clap in Tijuana. And approximately the same price, too. Once you're in, all you have to do is borrow a ticket from a friend, take it outside to another friend, and voila—you're all in. In the amount of time it took Travis LaFrance to complete the procedure, my accomplice, waiting in a bar on Canal Street near the Freedom Cage, had already been given three passes by a stranger in a bar—one of which was a coveted red pass (floor) and another of which was a luxury suite pass. So by the time we passed through the metal detectors we had no fewer than five passes between us. I sure hope the Republicans or the terrorists don't figure this system out.

I jaunted up to the elevator, luxury pass in pocket, to claim my place in the suites. But wouldn’t you know it the fire marshal had shut Level 6 down completely. And then I couldn't even get a seat in the cheap seats. It turns out that a bunch of irresponsible assholes were abusing the system, and scamming their way into the seats of legitimate pass-holders. Have they no shame?

So I ended up watching John Edwards speak on a television screen out by the hot dog vendors. Toward the end I wandered away from the TV set, talked my way past an usher to a seat, and it was if I had passed through the looking glass into the television set, and there I was in the stands, waving my sign and clapping my hands.