Three Cheers for... Something Else!

We're in the run-up to the big speeches, when speakers like Dr. Elena Rios of the Hispanic Medical Association are prodded onstage with a half-hearted "knock 'em dead, kid" to address an uninterested audience. Rios, though, was entertainingly off-message. By the year 2032, she said, minorities will make up a majority of our population! Dead silence. John McCain understands this! Yet more silence. Then, when Rios warned the crowd about the high rate of AIDS in non-white women, higher than it is among white women, a small roar of applause went up on the left of the stage. Sen. Bob Dole was walking the floor, saying hi.