Tiny Silver Death Machine: Election Coverage 2008

POSTED BY: Don DeLillo, Master of Postmodern Literature

Sep 26, 2008, 12:00 pm

Noted author Don DeLillo blogged for The Onion from the Conventions

He speaks in your voice, American, and he's blogging right next to me, as I type my own blog, in this our blogging age. Our faces fixated with vigorous purpose on glowing rectangular screens, measured in centimeters. In the air, invisible information. Uploads, downloads. Waves and radiation. Surrounding us both, on every side of the lobby, dozens more do exactly the same, typing with their thumbs into tiny silver death machines.

From across America, they come to Minneapolis, to Denver, in herds, teaming hordes filled with sounds, smells. In great tidal flows of seething humanity they ease around the I-beam sculptures and move into the sports arenas. They are loaded down with noisemakers and paper and special hats.

The crowds are a slowly spreading ripple and moan. They heave and surge with some unexplainable animal intelligence. They have to walk slowly to accommodate their awe. Snatches of unattributed dialogue—absurdist, yet paradoxically naturalistic—come out of the mass of pressing bodies:

"You cannot state categorically?"

"Not at the present moment."

"So that's that?"

"As far as we are aware."

"So the general consensus seems to be that we don't know enough at this time to be sure of anything."

"Let me put it to you like this: if I were a rat, I wouldn't want to be within a 200 mile radius of Minneapolis right now."

"What if you were a human?"

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