My current job mostly involves driving around Los Angeles from bar to bar and dropping off my resume hoping for the off chance that there might be an opening and that they'd be impressed enough to give me a gig, cause I got none. But fate had other plans, as I walked dejected through the (fully staffed) Beverly Hilton. At the entry to the International Ballroom, I saw a sign, and that sign said Frank Luntz Focus Group. And so I went in.

I quickly moved to a dark, distant table to avoid the guy in the red sweater with a list I knew I wasn't on. Who should find me hiding in the shadows other than, of course, Frank Luntz himself.

"Are you participating in the focus group?" he asked.

"Well, no, I just saw the sign and I've seen you on Bill Maher and-"

"So you're from the left."

"You can say that," I whimpered. Then, offering a truce, I said, "It looks like you two have fun together."

"It's fun for him. It's a pain in the ass for me," he said.

To be fair, it can't be easy hocking books with Republican talking points on Bill Maher's show. I'm impressed that he pulls it off without a sweat.

"I tell you what," he said. "If we have space you can sit in on the focus group."

The next thing I know, I'm front center being broadcast live to four million+ Fox News viewers on Hannity's America, twisting my reaction dial hard while viewing Christine O' Donnell's "I'm Not a Witch" spot. But once we were set to talking about our opinions, the experience wasn't like what was later shown on TV, which was: every-day Americans spouting boilerplate and me rocking like a mute Rain Man from my hyperactivity and Hannity-hathos.

Also, I realize I need a haircut.

The real show, though, was just off camera, in the form of Frank Luntz conducting this orchestra of ideas.

This is the Frank Luntz no one gets to see. This is the man at work. With the camera turned away, silhouetted by the TV lights in his suit and tennis shoes, he would hop, dance and thrust his arms about. As the group got rowdy, he settled his hands to silence the mob so the camera could zero in on a speaker. As the energy died, he would plead, point and coax the crowd until someone picked up the ball. This is what it takes to fill six minutes of television with an untrained, uncoached focus group. At the end of his symphony, there was no applause for Dr. Luntz.

As the beads of sweat formed on his brow, the only send-off he received was a "See you next time," from Hannity and the flashing of a red light. At least there's a paycheck two weeks down the line for all his hustle. Even those of us in the focus group walked out with a crisp hundred-dollar bill in our pocket.

As I left, rich enough to afford two more tanks of gas, I took one last look at Frank. I wondered what he must be scheming next as the crew packed up the cameras and hardware. Or was he just exhausted? How many more memos? How many more dials? How many more dances?

Colin Sweeney is figuring out how to set up his website.

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To be fair, this rally they held yesterday-across the street from a theater showcasing Harvey Fierstein in Fiddler on the Roof-was to be a Very Serious Episode of Kathy Griffin's "My Life on the D-List." The singular break with tradition, where Kathy Griffin shows that she cares more than just about Kathy Griffin. That's hard to do on your own reality show! Yet she does! She tells us she supports the troops at USO shows! She read aloud the emails and letters she receives from gay service members and their would-be spouses detailing the destructive secrecy that defines their everyday lives.

For HRC, and for the Bravo network as well, it was already pretty much a slam dunk. HRC, including honcho Joe Solmonese, were all in matching "Repeal DADT" shirts, so they showed up well. (They made up about a tenth of the crowd.) They got local ABC 7 and FOX 5 to report on Griffin's smackdown of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Crazytown)-Griffin called the nutbag a "nutbag." The synergy therefore spread beyond the 300-odd activists (and, obviously, HRC staffers) corralled in a rally in D.C.; amplified by the evening news, much-later to be amplified on Kathy Griffin's show.

This triple win then, through no doing of HRC's, became a quadruple win.

Lieutenant Dan Choi, the West Point graduate and combat veteran who outed himself on The Rachel Maddow Show last year, invited himself to speak at this "rally." (Choi was initially discharged from the Army after his self-outing and has since been reinstated as an enlisted officer.) At the end, he asked everyone to march, not down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the Capitol and Barney and Bachmann, but up Pennsylvania toward the White House. His remarks were met with cheers (though not from HRC, who hadn't invited Choi and didn't answer his requests to speak (though Griffin did).

Lieutenant Choi then left the stage to begin his march. He looked really intense. Most of the media stayed with Griffin, though-who, her job done, did not follow along. A block up, the few hundred at the rally were struggling to keep up with a soldier on a mission. By the time Choi reached the White House gates, mostly just a few dozen tourists were present to witness a uniformed officer in the U.S. Army handcuff himself to the White House gate. He was, yes, soon arrested, as were two others. Given such unbecoming behavior from an officer, he will likely be discharged once again. And so progresses the cause of equality for gay Americans and D-list celebrities and their respective television networks and lobbying institutions.

Video by Liz Glover. Colin Sweeney is a writer in Washington, D.C.

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One of the most common images carried at the protest was that haunting work of art that first appeared on a wall in Los Angeles, depicting Obama as the Joker. To them, he is the nemesis of our society, but he isn't using gasoline and gunpowder to tear the country apart. These people love gunpowder and certainly think gasoline is more valuable than air. He is destroying America with everything from urbanism to international multiculturalism, tolerance, diversity and intellectualism. He is the antithesis to Palin's "Real America" and these people are out to take it back. My favorite poster: a slight waif of a girl, not yet old enough to know what a pre-existing condition is. carried a homemade sign depicting the Powerpuff Girls that read "We Must Save America."

There were a lot of people on the mall that day, but in the two hours I spent out there, in a city where the majority of the population is black, I saw but one person of color, an Asian woman. In the era of Reagan, this was the silent majority; now it's the shrinking minority. Latinos certainly aren't going to appreciate the signs that read "I don't want to press 1 for English." I don't think there's a black person out there whose breath doesn't seize up when he reads "Bury Obamacare with Kennedy". For a movement to succeed it must attract, not repel.

How long ago was it that a black woman would be denied entrance to a whites-only restroom? Well, at one point in the afternoon, a white woman wearing a shirt that said "Kill Fags," which appeared to be a homemade silkscreen job, felt a similar call of nature. At the door of [A LOCAL SPORTS BAR], she met Matt [LAST NAME REDACTED], one of the bar's managers. He told her that she could not use the restroom.

"So you're refusing?" she asked.

"Yes," Matt said. "There's no public option here."

"Bastard," she said.

"I can do you one better," Matt said. "I suck cock."

He then put his tongue in his cheek and cupped his hand, moving it back and forth in front of his mouth in the internationally-recognized gesture for fellatio.

"I'm one of those," he said, pointing at her shirt. She left to find a bathroom more accommodating to her sort.


Update: Names and locations have been redacted from this post, due to harassment of the person involved, to protect his privacy.

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In a Q&A discussion that followed the film with Pete Fornatale, author of Back to the Garden, a confrontation between the author and a member of the audience erupted as to whether Woodstock was a political event. The movie-goer, who has probably spent a long time intellectualizing "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," gave a long winded articulation that Woodstock represented a kind of "instinctual revolution" against the political drift of the country carried out through expression and sensual indulgence.

Fornatale was having none of it. Citing the incident where Pete Townsend cracked the activist Abbie Hoffman over the back with his Gibson SG for giving an impromptu address from the stage, he argued that Woodstock, if anything, was an attempt at something pure and free from the corruption that comes from an association with venal old politics.

Another aging hippie in the crowd waxed nostalgic about Woodstock being the first time that he felt he didn't belong to a subversive subculture but was, rather, a part of the new cultural paradigm that was growing out of the 60's.

This screening, it turns out, was likely the only free thing he has attended since Woodstock.

I was left wondering if these men had seen the same movie I had. The film doesn't depict Woodstock as some defining moment of history-but rather as the manic, disorganized freakshow that it was, where the activists organize, the business men haggle, the users use, and the drag queens pack heat. Yet somehow, and the film captures this beautifully, the confluence of all these people on that farm at that time produced a party like no other, featuring some of the most legendary musicians of all time.

Thankfully Mr. Fornatale had to catch a flight about 15 minutes into the Q&A, cutting it short before the subject became overwrought-which, on the fortieth anniversary of the Woodstock Music & Arts Festival, is by far the greatest threat to the legacy of a show at which, despite mud, rain and a shortage of porta-loos, 500,000 people managed to have the time of their lives.

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Even more conspicuous, however, were the dozens of fidgeting tween girls with their camera phones competing for lines of sight against professional photographers. At one point the National Press Club President Donna Leinwand had to remind the guests that only "Professional members of the press" are allowed to kneel in front of the podium to take photographs.

All in all, it was a good event for those with Type 1 Diabetes, as Nick's charity received a $100,000 donation from Bayer AG subsidiary, Bayer Health Care.

One might be suspicious, however, that this may be an act of image polishing on the part of Bayer. Last November, the firm was forced to make a settlement payment to the tune of $97.5 million, after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation for running a kickback scheme with 11 separate diabetes suppliers to convert patients to Bayer products. The payments for patients that Bayer was making were disguised as "advertising" payments, the Justice Dept. said.

Just another wholesome day in the books for Nick Jonas before he flies to Canada to film Camp Rock 2 for that other child-friendly corporate behemoth, Disney.

Photos by The Washington Times' Liz Glover. Colin Sweeney is a writer in Washington, D.C. You can reach him at Colin @ The Awl.

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