Some Tips for Democrats on Getting ‘Free Media’

Well, aren’t we just the cat’s meow.

The city of Buff Shoulders is about to land the Democratic National Convention for 2000.

We know this not because the Democratic National Committee has yet acknowledged what “is” is; it’s still playing so coy you’d think it was holding ticket No. 1 at Ken Starr’s Deposition Deli.

We know it only because the mayor of Boston has already manfully hugged his bouquet of runner-up roses in the convention sweepstakes, leaving only Denver, which is akin to putting Woody Allen in the ring with Joe Louis--you want to avert your eyes.

Los Angeles’ billionaire booster Eli Broad put the likelihood of L.A.’s winning in endearingly Angeleno vocabulary: “The stars are in alignment.”

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The year 2000 marks 40 years since the Democrats last brought their hooray hoopla here. Since then, they’ve had four decades to think it over, to come up with enough good reasons to come back.

In truth, all they need are 54 reasons: California’s 54 electoral votes, which can either put a man into a personalized Air Force 1 Windbreaker or send him off to do Visa commercials and Viagra clinical trials.

Among the other siren songs the Democratic National Committee heard Los Angeles singing was the seductive promise of “free media” in the nation’s second-largest media market. But looks, as no one denies better than L.A., can be deceiving. Hours of TV newscasts do not equal hours of TV news coverage.

In December, USC released a study on TV coverage of last year’s high-stakes California gubernatorial race. It found that in the state’s five major media markets, in the final three months of the campaign, slightly less than a third of 1% of news time was spent on the race--34 hours and 13 minutes out of 25,440 hours. In 1974, the ratio was nearly 10 times as high.

Perhaps the Site Selection Committee members were kept too occupied with feting and feasting to do anything but get back to their hotel rooms at night and collapse--too weary, surely, to switch on a TV and actually watch these manifold newscasts they anticipate will be riveted by the spectacle of Democrats being democratic.

So, Democrats: Now that you’ll be with us next summer, the real challenge won’t be getting around (we’ll honor those “taxi zones,” honest).

The challenge will be getting Los Angeles to know that you’re even in town. Local TV news is so easily distracted. Imagine the news editor quandaries: “Do we cover that speech calling for permanent American bases in Bosnia--or a half-acre brush fire below the Hollywood Sign?”

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In 1984, when the Democrats met in San Francisco, Walter Mondale had the ill luck to be nominated for president on the same day that, at the other end of the state, a man named James O. Huberty shot up a fast-food place, killing 21. So what led the local news? Well my dears: We nominate some guy for president each four years; it isn’t every day a man turns mass murderer inside a true national institution like McDonald’s.

If the Democrats really want “free media” in Los Angeles, here’s how to get it:

* Make sure that the motorcade taking Clinton from his hotel to the convention to give his outgoing Miss-America-ends-her-reign speech is sidelined on the Santa Monica Freeway by a high-speed freeway police chase.

* Promote the press conference where Hillary Rodham Clinton, again the standard-bearer for health care reforms, announces that Medicare will now cover cosmetic surgery.

* In a photo op that would also underscore Al Gore’s repudiation of allegations of illegal Chinese campaign contributions, send Tipper Gore to accompany the LAPD on a warehouse raid to seize thousands of Chinese-made counterfeit Victoria’s Secret lace bodysuits and push-up bras.

* Stage a ginned-up floor debate, led by delegate Shirley MacLaine, over a proposal to add the oxymoronic “New Age Science” to high school curricula.

* Send Bill Clinton, disguised, out to accompany undercover camera crews investigating “How Dirty Are Your Doughnuts? An Exclusive Expose That You and the LAPD Won’t Want to Miss.”

* Have Al Gore announce a Maximum Wage campaign issue from the infield of Dodger Stadium, taking lobs from pitcher Kevin Brown, the $105-million poster boy for the overpaid.

Wait, scratch those. Here’s an easier idea: Simply issue press passes to the entire staff of “Entertainment Tonight,” and call it a convention.

Al Martinez has the day off. Columnist Patt Morrison pinch-hits for him today. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com.