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"    CHARLOTTE, N.C. \u2014 She had a bodyguard, and just as the roll call of convention delegates was beginning, he came over and whispered something into the ear of the lawyerly, bespectacled man in charge of the Tennessee delegation. The man nodded, and then turned to the woman next to him and said, &amp;quot;She&amp;#039;s on her way.&amp;quot; People were already starting to gather around in anticipation of her arrival, many with cameras already in hand. Then the bodyguard reappeared, a tall black man in a gray pinstriped suit, and the cameras began to go off. With the bodyguard was Ashley Judd and her mother Naomi. Ashley Judd was wearing a chiffony white dress with a black pattern around the plunge in the front and scoop in the back. The dress looked vintage, and in terms of character so did she. Indeed, with her hair in a flip set off by a white gardenia, and the Raggedy-Ann circles of pink painted on her cheeks, and the liquid scarlet of her nails, she looked as if she had arrived at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday night from the set of a 1940s noir where she was playing a bar girl invested with doomed glamor. Her mother, of course, looked as much like the mother of the doomed bar girl as the mother of Ashley Judd \u2014 she wore a close-fitting purple dress and half-boots, and her lips were heart-shaped and her hair was the color of her lipstick, and when Ashley took a seat next to the head of the delegation, she went, with her rigorous posture and her ghostly poise, to a seat several rows down. Ashley Judd was a delegate to the convention, and sat close to the blue pole identifying the Tennessee delegation in big block letters, as well as the microphone and a little perch for a MacBook. She looked tired and damp, and opened up a mustard-colored handbag and cleansed her hands with a towlette. I went over to her. I had profiled her more than ten years ago, and she had made me biscuits in the kitchen of her Tennessee home. I reminded her of this, and she said yes, she remembered \u2014 &amp;quot;how kind of you to visit me after all this time.&amp;quot; Then she gave me a wink. It was not a flirtatious gesture, for she does not flirt. After I&amp;#039;d written about her, she sent me a piece of communication \u2014 a telegram \u2014 that for all its formal warmth served implicit notice that no further communication would ensue. Her wink was like that, and when I continued the conversation, she winked again, one more time. By this time, the roll call was in full cry, and when Ohio&amp;#039;s votes put Barack Obama over as the Democratic nominee, she stood up and slipped out of her flat red sandals, and put a pair of shiny black high heels over the wadded Band-Aid on her achilles tendon. She walked over to one of the arena&amp;#039;s concrete supports, and leaned against it, her eyes closing in the very image of premeditated ease. A sudden phalanx of three attendants surrounded her, and when the people using their smart phones to take pictures of her as she sat down now attempted to take pictures of her as she stood up, her bodyguard interjected himself and said, &amp;quot;Miss Judd asks that her picture not be taken at this moment.&amp;quot; Still, the occasional flash went off, and her diamond rings, earrings, and filigreed cross sparkled in answer. After a while, he opened her eyes as deliberately as she closed them, and set her lips in a smile. I went over to her and asked a question about the lovely house she owned when I interviewed her. Through her unabating smile, she said, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m sorry, I&amp;#039;m doing the speech in my head.&amp;quot; I returned to where I was, and she stepped forward, practicing the set of her shoulders. She found her iPhone in her pocketbook and began texting, as passers-by tried raising their own iPhones and digital cameras over the heads of her protectors. Then she escaped; she walked through those clustered around her, and went down a concrete stairway like Scarlett O&amp;#039;Hara in a Brutalist Tara. With a sudden madcap grace, she bent at the waist, and when she straightened back up she exclaimed, &amp;quot;C&amp;#039;mon, people!&amp;quot; to her delegation, for the roll call had reached New Jersey and the barbarian hordes of New York. Her delegation began to cheer, and when Ashley Judd stood up in the light of the MacBook and began reading the speech she&amp;#039;d prepared in 18-point type, no one stopped them from taking pictures and shooting video.  Then the spotlights came on, from the huge fixtures way up on the ceiling. It was a mysterious moment; suddenly the movie star was bathed in light, and with her shoulders set back as she had practiced setting them back, and a proudly lifted chin, and a gorgeous smile, and her vowels rounded like those of the actresses on Turner Classic Movies, she gave her nominating statement. She glanced not once at the computer screen opened in front of her, and though her voice under the delegation&amp;#039;s TENNESSEE pole was small and barely carried, her amplified voice boomed in fractional delay throughout the arena. She made reference to Stax Records, and promised, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re gonna dance to Otis Redding later.&amp;quot; But when she was done, and her bodyguard said, &amp;quot;She did great, she did great,&amp;quot; she made accelerated provisions to leave, her handbag and glowing iPhone in the button-bestrewn tote bag that her bodyguard already carried. Naomi materialized next to her and whispered into her ear something as lost to time as the words Bill Murray whispered to Scarlett Johansson in Lost In Translation, and then Ashley Judd turned on her heel and left her behind, a mother alone with her oddly unchanging beauty, and all but one of the delegates from Tennessee.  CLICK HERE FOR THE POLITICS BLOG&amp;#039;S COMPLETE COVERAGE FROM THE DNC, PLUS FOLLOW @ESQPOLITICS AND @TOMJUNOD FOR LIVE ANALYSIS ALL DAY &amp;amp;amp; NIGHT "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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