A first brush with celebrity came quickly tonight after picking up my Media Reform Conference registration. We spotted him in the Marriott hotel bar across the street from the Cook Convention Center. Moyers was kind enough to pose for a photo with a coworker of mine who adores him, which I may be able to post or link to later.

So far, the conference hosts seem nice, but the well-positioned exhibit hall is a little on the kooky side. Up front and center, of course, is MoveOn.org’s booth. Then there’s the usual mix of Leftist propaganda vendors, 9/11 conspiracy theorists, race-based and gender-based independent media outlets, and peddlers of single-issue bumper stickers: pro-abortion, church-state separation, Bush hate, Rightwingers are stupid, Americans are arrogant, Who Would Jesus Bomb, etc. Most of the people milling about are either unshaven, grizzly young Marxists who could seriously use a bath, aged hippies wearing cowboy hats covered with a dozen anti-Bush buttons and other flair, balding, brooding Alan Ginsberg clones with black-rimmed glasses to match their all-black wardrobe, or cyper punks with orange goatees, knit hats, trench coats and “free our media” bumper stickers affixed to their laptops. Likeable people, really, and I think I should be able to blend in fairly well.