The words "fun" and "political speech" usually don't go together - unless you, like me, watched John McCain's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention with the members of the Salt Lake City chapter of Drinking Liberally.

The group, which is as dedicated to liberal causes as it is to having a good time, gathered last night at Saints and Sinners, a private club in South Salt Lake, to watch McCain's speech. About 30 or 40 people showed up - including the Democratic challengers for governor and lieutenant governor, Bob Springmeyer and Josie Valdez.

Drinking Liberally was born in New York City in May 2003, and now boasts 293 chapters in all 50 states. The Salt Lake chapter has been around for about three years, according to Heather Culligan, one of the three "hosts" of the McCain event. (The chapter meets regularly on the second and fourth Fridays of the month at Piper Down, 1492 S. State St., Salt Lake City.)

Before McCain's speech (which we watched on one-hour tape delay, because the TVs were tuned to KUED, and nobody realized it wasn't a live feed until it was too late), and I got chatting with Valdez and with Misty Fowler, chairperson of Utah for Obama (who was live-blogging the speech from the bar on her web site, saintless.com).

Valdez and Fowler were both in Denver last week for the Democratic National Convention, and they compared that experience to the show from St. Paul they were seeing on TV.

"It was absolutely amazing," Fowler said, "seeing so many different people gathered in one place from so many different backgrounds."

Valdez remarked on how disorganized and dispirited the Republican rank-and-file looked on the floor of Xcel Energy Center. "We had better sign flow and coordination at our party," Valdez said. Fowler added that the cheering and sign-carrying was all organized by Democratic volunteers, who took the job because it gave them a chance to get into the Pepsi Center and be part of the event.

Once McCain's speech started, everybody was gathered around the TV with their beer glasses ready. Culligan had passed out copies of a drinking-game (devised by Drinking Liberally's Portland, Ore., chapter) to go with the speech. A few people added their own rules, such as taking a drink every time the cameras captured a person of color (which, for the whiter-than-white Republicans, became a sort of televised "Where's Waldo?" game).

Most got into the game with good spirit, though there was one loud angry guy who kept getting louder and angrier as his beer intake increased. I hope he got home OK.

Here's the drinking-game scorecard, as I tallied it:

• Sip when McCain says taxes should be cut: 6
• Sip when he mentions Barack Obama by name: 6
• Sip when he talks about his bipartisan record: 3
• Sip when he refers to his running mate, Sarah Palin, as a reformer: 1
• Sip when he talks about the "surge" being a success: 1
• Sip when he says we have to stay in Iraq until we win: 1
• Drink when he mentions he's a POW: 1
• Drink when he refers to Palin's "executive experience": 1
• Drink when he acknowledges that most Americans think the economy is in bad shape: 3
• Chug when he calls himself a maverick: 2

And we didn't even get to the end of McCain's speech, because the bar's regular Thursday night reggae band, Soul Redemption started playing at 10 p.m. Those who wanted to catch the rest of the speech did so without sound, with the closed-captioning on.

As it turns out, some good reggae music is the perfect way to relax after fiery political rhetoric.

Labels: John McCain, politics, Sarah Palin