Dems gone wild!

It's nearly midnight and the NYU College Democrats are out in force - in Pittsburgh.
After a long Saturday of canvassing the downtrodden of post-industrial western Pennsylvania, these 50-odd representatives of the still-beating heart of Greenwich Village student activism are ready to party, if only to relieve election-related hypertension. And their gracious hosts, their counterparts at the slightly less dreamy University of Pittsburgh, are more than willing to oblige. They've rented a profoundly skeezy sushi-bar-themed-dive (replete with a cloudy aquarium, plastic cups, and a prodigious assortment of shitty domestic beer) for the occasion.
Yes indeed, the stage would seem to be set for a night of highly liberal - some might even argue, progressive - debauchery.
Unfortunately, the harried 'burgher running the soundsystem - which consists of one skip-prone CD player and a dented mixer - has just replaced a mix of club bangers with "Livin' on a Prayer," and begun to hector people into dancing.
Even after rounds of sake and the Champagne of Beers, I am getting testy.
Turning to a fellow College Dem hanger-on, I ask a pressing question:
"Why is it that in the year 2004 people still think that Bon Jovi is acceptable party music?"
"Because they don't live in New York," he says. His tone is matter-of-fact enough to defy charges of elitism.
"In my experience, people who don't live in New York or California generally tend to think and care a lot less about music," he explains further. "Their experience of music is less conscious and more passive."
"Which would explain how the girl who was in charge of music for this party could tell me without any shame that she'd just downloaded a bunch of random stuff based on MTV," I say as "You Give Love a Bad Name" begins to skip terminally.
"She said she usually listened to Jack Johnson."
The death-spasms of the CD player are quickly defining the deviancy of the party, meaning that when one of the city-folk arrives on the scene brandishing an iPod it is cause for much rejoicing.
Since he's another one of the people to whom I've been bitching about the music, he asks me for technical assistance.
"Do you have any idea how to hook this up to the mixer?"
I seize my opportunity. "Sure," I say. "Any chance I could play a few songs?"
Five minutes later I'm standing in the DJ booth, a stranger's iPod in one hand and the mixer -- which, as it turns out, is dented because the struts it rests on are angled toward the floor, necessitating constant vigilance to keep it from committing mixercide -- in the other.
Faced with the spinning equivalent of a blindfolded quadruple salchow -- the salvation of a party that's been nearly fatally Bon Jovied, using only someone else's music collection -- I try to remain calm.
One of the funny things about iPods is the extent to which one can make assumptions about a person's lifestyle and personality based on the music they carry around in their pocket.
It soon pains me to discover that the man to whom the 'Pod in question belongs does not have enough crunk in his life. In point of fact, there is a deficit of all things booty-shaking. Yes indeed, this here hard drive is owned by a member of the genus whitus rhythmlessicus.
Luckily, even white guys who can't shake it love "Toxic." Surely this is the pop trash single of the year: the Dems, hitherto satisfied to molest one another at the bar, react with a Pavlovian mass seizure. Simple as Britney, the dancefloor goes from zero to hero.
If my thought process at this moment were a bumper sticker, it would read "I'd rather be playing New Order." My Grinchy elitist heart shrinks a few sizes. Nevertheless, there's something undeniable about a surging dancefloor.
Actively spinning a party is a strangely alienating experience, since the DJ controls the groove of the shindig rather than partaking in it. The best DJs govern from the center, sensing intuitively what dancers want and taking them there.
Unfortunately, the dancefloor, which now boasts a two-to-one Pitt-fratboy to College Dem ratio, wants very badly to get Dirrty, and my options in that respect are severely limited.
The divide evoked earlier, between New Yorkers who want to be challenged by music and Pittsburghers who'd rather the party be programmed by Clear Channel, becomes sadly evident. I lose track of the number of times I am asked to play more Britney.
By two a.m., my compatriots have grown tired of being manhandled by Pitt kids and it is time to leave.
Upon departure, I consider willfully killing the dancefloor that got away by playing the iPod's strangest selection: Barack Obama's speech to the Democratic National Convention.
I couldn't bring myself to do it, but it probably wouldn't have worked anyway.
After all, to your average College Democrat, Barack Obama is the crunkest motherfucker alive.