*This particular message not endorsed by Blake Boston (a/k/a Scumbag Steve)

Blake Boston might be the most adored degenerate on earth. But even without hyperbole, he's one of the Bay State's biggest exports. Ever since a photo of Boston (that's his real name) posing in his kitchen doorway was sucked into the viral whirlwind two years ago, and universally branded by internet users as Scumbag Steve, the Massachusetts native's fur-lined G-Unit parka and signature patterned fitted hat – the latter famously cocked back and to the side – have transcended the underground world of web memes and effectively highjacked the pop culture agenda.

I wasn't supposed to cover the Hofstra debate, or even the protests outside. But a family emergency recently summoned me back to my native Long Island, so I broke away for about five hours yesterday to sample the madness. It felt good to be home; despite all of the warranted abuse that the Gold Coast gets for harboring guidos, the place really is a magical bourgeois paradise, and a phenomenal place to people watch.

It's been four days since more than two dozen buildings and public spaces across Boston, Cambridge, and beyond got smacked with posters of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama flashing cash like Biggie at a strip club. The life-size black-and-white images are hard to miss; from a lot near Malden High School to Jamaica Plain, both candidates appear to be laughing at the voting masses as a caricature lobbyist cracks a suitcase full of Benjamins.

I never thought that I'd find myself at two o'clock in the morning, hanging solo on a corner in uptown Charlotte, having two kind older black women telling me to stop preaching about war and the prison industrial complex. Yet there I was, one block from the Charlotte Convention Center, hailing a taxi for two sixty-something Georgia peaches who had missed the shuttle back to their motel.

While Democrats were masturbating one another last night, pretending that America is not at war and that the current administration is a friend to all immigrants, about 100 wet and wild protesters hit the concrete despite rain by the bucketload and a tough day in the streets. By Tuesday evening, more than a dozen activists had been arrested outside of the convention, including some immigrants' rights picketers who caused a scene as delegates filed inside.

It wasn't a conspiracy that more protest news didn't come out of the Republican National Convention. There weren't utterly significant events to report, let alone a larger bloodbath for journalists to hang a week of coverage on. Considering the circumstances, authorities in Tampa weren't all that unreasonable; the few arrests that did go down could have been avoided if protesters heeded simple requests from cops.

The 2004 Democratic and Republican national conventions were all about the bloggers. Mainstream reporters even wrote articles about their scrappy young counterparts, who in turn provided some long overdue alternative coverage to the mostly mundane quadrennial festivities. Four years later it was Twitter that was red hot, though mostly only insiders, reporters, and attendees took advantage of the service, since it had yet to fully click with the American public.