CBC's Neil Macdonald reports that while the media couldn't bring any fresh fruit into the U.S. Democratic convention in Denver, they were fed everything else.

From CBC.ca (Aug. 28):

Attendees — and remember, anyone attending this convention is thoroughly vetted far in advance — are forbidden from entering with any sort of fresh fruit. A journalist or a delegate might get rebellious and peg one at a speaker, apparently. As journalists surrendered their juicy contraband the first morning, the potentially dangerous tangerines, plums and pears filled the waste barrels.

Liquids are regarded with suspicion. Some are forbidden. One of my on-air CBC colleagues, a dignified 71-year-old commentator, was relieved of his hairspray.

I haven't met a single journalist who doesn't complain about the manufactured nature of the whole event. "A Potemkin village of democracy," one columnist called it.

Yet they — we — accept this all meekly, recording and reporting speeches we would ignore in most other settings.

Good media strategists understand that reporters, once inside a controlled environment, have to work with whatever they are fed.

In here, every speech is relative only to every other speech. Hence, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann practically swooning after Hillary Clinton's nicely delivered, but hardly historical speech Tuesday night: "A grand slam!" sputtered the ecstatic newsman. "Out of the park! Over the fence! Over the buildings beyond the fence!"

In my own defence, I prefer listening to people like (grassroots activist) Art Suarez*. I really do. But it's hard to get outside the perimeter very often.

* He created the Obama Wisdom Book, which is a collection of the sayings of The Chosen One.