Mentioned I dropped off Lavin near one of the several protests going on around town. For the most part, these have been pretty tame. Benton Musslewhite, a Texas alt-delegate, was five feet from Dan Rather in 1968 when Rather was beaten up in Grant Park at the Dem convention in Chicago. (He was a delegate, one of the two Texas delegates who voted for Eugene McCarthy for vice president instead of Hubert Humphrey, infuriating LBJ, who wanted a unanimous Texas vote.) He told me these protests are so tame, he doesn’t even notice them. (He mentioned this while sipping on a big Dos Equis with lime at 3 p.m. Love Texas drinkers.) He points out that anytime there are five cops for every protester, it’s not really dangerous.
Which disappoints people like Lavin, who loves a fight. She photographed a protest that ran through downtown near the Colorado Convention Center. It was led by Alex Jones, an Austin radio talk-show host best known for his 9/11 conspiracy theories. (He’s the guy with the bullhorn.) He’s very anti-authority, has confronted conservative politicians in public here in Denver, his group is documenting its suspicions of abuse of government authority around town (complete with the fake-accent phrase “beeches,” sort of like the one employed by Ben Stiller in Anchorman), and he decided to talk to the assembled media through Spider Monkey.
“Who are you?” he asked, pointing to her within the group of a dozen or so media still snapping photos and taking notes. She said she was from D Magazine in Dallas. He then addressed all his comments to her, so she interviewed him, as everyone else took notes. She elicited many things from him, including his hot sports opinion that “right-wing provocateurs” were attempting to get arrested in Denver to make Democrats look bad. (At one point, one of the people with Jones’ group thought he recognized one of these “provocateur plants” photographing next to Lavin. This led the cameraman to take refuge behind the dozens of cops there keeping the peace.) Most interesting to me? That he works for Emmis’ radio arm. So he’s kind of paid by Texas Monthly, in my book.
