Political fanboys and girls will be in heaven next month as Politicon comes to the Los Angeles Convention Center.

Organizers bill the convention scheduled for *Oct. 9 and 10 as “a nonpartisan Comic-Con style event for politics and entertainment” and a “fan-fest for political junkies.” 

Red-state headliners include author Ann Coulter, former Republican U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. But there will be plenty of blue-state pontificating as well.

Onetime President Clinton strategist James Carville, President Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod and Obama speechwriter Jon Favreau are scheduled to appear.

Culture critic Touré and pop star Clay Aiken also are on the bill.

And a culture clash of organizations, including Breitbart News Network and Newsmax TV on the right and Black Lives Matter and Salon Media Group on the left, could provide fireworks.

If they don't, there's always Coulter, who, like Donald Trump, has pretty much insulted the entire Latino nation.

Twisted facts and outright lies in her latest book, ¡Adios, America! — The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole, are outdone only by her racist outlook. The United States, she writes, is “importing primitive cultures that are centuries behind the West … .”

This Latino journalist would like to respond by jumping around with his arms over his head and proclaiming “Ooga booga!” 

Coulter even claims to live here part-time. We imagine it's impossible to live in L.A. without soaking up the benefits of undocumented labor. We wonder how she does it. Maybe Coulter doesn't eat.

If that's not enticing enough for a market where one out of every two of us has Latino heritage, there's always Bachmann. 

She's just an epic quote machine:* She said recently that Donald Trump was polling “the highest with Hispanics that any Republican has ever been.”

OK, let's not be partisan here. Carville is a brilliant man … if you can figure out what the hell he's talking about through that thick Southern accent.

He's quoted as having once said:

With Democrats all you have to do is make a lot of noise, lay out the hay, and be ready to use the ol' cattle prod in case a few want to bolt the herd.


The proper response to that is to scratch your head and mutter, WTF. However, the authenticity of that particular passage is disputed.

In any case, it sounds like Politicon has got quite a show in store for Los Angeles. Capacity is 3,500 a day. Organizers say programming will be music-festival style, with multiple panels happening at the same time. Tickets start at $25 for Friday general admission.

“We live in an age when entertainment and politics are so intertwined that each shapes the other,” Newt Gingrich says. “Politicon is a very exciting opportunity to bring together the two worlds and create a synergistic creativity in which each learns from the other. I am sure I will learn far more than I will teach during Politicon.”

*Correction: This post has been edited to remove a Bachmann quote labeled by PolitiFact as “satire.” Sorry about that. It felt right. The date was fixed, too.

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