THE WHOLE WORLD IS WATCHING. In today's New York Observer (not in the web edition), Jim Callaghan suggests that those sincerely wishing to stop Bush should refrain from demonstrating in New York during the upcoming Republican Convention. He worries that the Cause will be damaged by TVs bearing to the hinterlands images of "angry youths and assorted lefties, joined by antiwar activists who are against war even after 3,000 people were slaughtered." That last, bloody-shirted bit may have you wondering whether Callaghan is really playing for the other side, but he insists he's only playing devil's advocate: "We all know that Nixon and his felons had provocateurs at the 1972 Republican Convention to make sure that America wouldn't forget that he was the white man's President, the voice of the 'Silent Majority'... Don't discount the theory that the G.O.P. picked New York for the 2004 Convention for the same reason: the prospect of demonstrators behaving badly."

Callaghan seems to forget that New York has played host to hundreds of thousands of anti-Iraq-war demonstrators without serious incident. The net effect has been to remind people that not everyone is on board with this Administration's policies, even in the former home of the twin towers. So well-behaved were they that even reliable Republican propagandists could only fudge the numbers and point to smaller, pro-war demos as a true reflection of the Will of the People.

Crazier still is the idea that Bush picked this site so that ABC could show dirty hippies disturbing the peace. In locating here, so close to the 9/11 anniversary, he obviously wants America to believe -- in the absence of any countervailing visual evidence -- in a New York shell-shocked and agreeable to his Iraqi vengeance, no matter how disconnected that was from the actual attacks. He wants us, in other words, as a prop, mute and serviceable to his purpose. Here's a supporting quote from Mayor/Nanny Bloomberg in Scholastic magazine: "When the Republican convention comes to New York we are going to remember those young men and women who died on September 11 and those that are fighting for us today." It's a good bet that Bloomberg and his comrades expect this line of reasoning to go over as well with grown-ups as it surely did with the pre-teen readers of Scholastic.

The Republicans are fully expecting New Yorkers to play their part in this charade: a local newspaper and subway campaign featuring former Mayor/Clown Ed Koch exhorts us to "be nice" to the visiting Republicans. The idea, articulated in many outlets (including the current Mayor's own news service), is that the sons and daughters of the Oatmeal, Nebraska Rotary Club will drop a bundle here and revivify our sagging economy. Everyone knows where the city's heart is (we haven't electorally supported a Republican candidate since Coolidge), but as the local GOP web site puts it, "the city has been welcoming, from the labor unions with which Republicans have traditionally had rocky relations, to everyday people who want the convention to succeed, if not Bush's re-election bid. The Democrats might hope it is a mismatch on the magnitude of ordering a corned beef sandwich on white with mayo, but officially they support whatever helps the New York economy."

In the days of Catherine the Great, the real residents of Potemkin villages only had to stay out of sight. Now we are expected to do a full-on meet-and-greet, in hopes that we may be thrown a few kopeks.

I expect all good citizens to be civil to such Republicans as fortune sends our way this summer, but civility is not silence. If they don't like demonstrations, if they prefer New York to behave like a hick town bowing and scraping to Wal-Mart, too fucking bad for them.