E-Mail This Article to a Friend Up the establishment (continued)

Most hated man in Boston this week? Our bet: Fox News pit bull Bill O’Reilly. Wanna know where to find the bastard? Tuesday at 3 p.m. at the Sports Club/LA (4 Avery Street in Boston, next to the Ritz Carlton), he’s among the guests at the Music for All Foundation’s panel on "Arts, Education, and the 21st Century Economy," along with Arianna Huffington and son-of-Mario Andrew Cuomo ( not to mention another Creative Coalition–wangled B-movie guest list including Alyssa Milano, Bill Baldwin, and Jason Bateman), though the panelist we really want to see is Tennessee congressman Harold Ford, if only to beg for tickets to his hush-hush invite-only gala (we couldn’t find out when and where, but if anyone knows, give us a ring), for which he’s booked his most famous constituent, Justin Timberlake. We’re still holding out hope for a rematch between O’Reilly and Al Franken — and since they’re both in town this week, you never know. Invoking the hallowed dead, a dozen members of the intelligentsia (and also Alec Baldwin) wonder aloud what would the late senator Paul Wellstone do? On Sunday, Baldwin, Franken, Huffington (again), Jim Hightower, Barbara Ehrenreich, and Michael Dukakis are among those responding to the question "What Must the Democratic Party Do To Live Up to the Progressive Vision of Paul Wellstone?" The answer will cost you between $25 and $100; the proceeds benefit Massachusetts Jobs with Justice. That’s at 4 p.m. at Old West Church, 131 Cambridge Street in the West End; call (617) 524-8778.

No surprise that a broad swath of Boston artists have mobilized to greet the convention. Organized by Cambridge’s always-provocative Zeitgeist Gallery, "13 Days of Creative Dissent" (already well into its second week) is centered on two major exhibits. At the First Congregational Church, 11 Garden Street in Harvard Square, "War Is . . . " has its closing reception, with music, activists, and other performing artists, on Saturday at 7 p.m. And the First Church just one of a dozen locations hosting pieces of the traveling exhibit "Yo! What Happened To Peace?", a clever compendium of anti-war and anti-Bush illustration. (Our favorite: a W made from an inversion of McDonald’s golden arches and adorned with the slogan "I’m bombin’ it.") That show is up through next Thursday, and walking tours are offered on Sunday from 3 to 9 p.m. The Zeitgeist is at 1353 Cambridge Street in Inman Square; call (617) 876-6060, or visit yowhathappenedtopeace.org.

If you thought the 2000 Florida ballots looked complicated, try the ones in "Participatory Democracy," for which five artists have designed an ingenious voting-booth installation that puts the mock back in democracy: the candidates are circus acts, and the ballot boxes are straight out of Coney Island. (In one such booth, the ballot is too big for the box, and if you do manage to squeeze it in, you’ll notice that the container has no bottom, so your vote ends up on the floor.) It’s on view through July 29 at Art Interactive, 130 Bishop Allen Drive in Central Square; call (617) 498-0100. Or venture over to the Fort Point Artists Community Gallery, where the city’s besieged art neighborhood gathers in a multi-disciplinary look at the "Virtual Democracy" via video, photo collage, and performance. It’s up through August 7 at 300 Summer Street in Boston; call (617) 423-4299. Punk, poet, and photographer Patti Smith is among the artists who’ve contributed to "Church and State," a protest-themed exhibit at the JP Art Market Gallery through August 8; one piece, a board game, turns the tables on the Iraqi Most Wanted playing deck, featuring instead the faces of senators on the cards. That’s at 36 South Street in JP; call (617) 522-1729. A dozen students at New England School of Art and Design have works up, including Matthew Nash’s portrait of Mayor Thomas Menino made entirely of M&Ms, in "Give Me Some Truth: Theories, Conspiracies, Politics, and Art," which is on view through August 17 at Suffolk University, 75 Arlington Street in Boston; call (617) 573-8785, or visit www.artvigor.org. Boston hardcore vet (and Phoenix contributor) Dave Tree’s exhibit of anti-Bush-sloganeering posters and T-shirts, "Democracy in Crisis," is up at the Paradise Lounge, 969 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, through July 31; his new band, Save Yourself, play there on Saturday with street punks Suspect Device. And Dennis Kucinich and Howard Zinn speak Monday night at a reception for "Shocked and Awed: Drawings from the Al Assail Primary School of Baghdad," a heartbreaking exhibit of crayon carnage drawn by Iraqi children in response to their experiences with the war. That’s at the Cambridge Multicultural Arts Center, 41 Second Street in Cambridge; call (617) 577-1400.

If after all of this you require a reminder of what all the hoopla’s about, you can reconnect with a host of presidential art around town. The Museum of Fine Arts (465 Huntington Avenue in Boston; call 617-267-9300) has historic drawings, prints, and photographs of 15 commanders in chief on view in "American Presidents." Chas Fagan received a commission from C-Span to paint all 43 presidential portraits, and they’re on display, from George Washington to George W., at the shops at the Prudential Center (in the Huntington Arcade) in "American Presidents: Life Portraits." Boston artist Eric Wolfson paints just one president — Jimmy Carter — but hopes his multiple portraits, on view in "cARTer," at ZuZu (474 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square; call 617-864-3278), will elevate the peanut farmer to a more exalted status. (Wolfson also hopes Carter will stop by the reception on Monday before taking the podium at the FleetCenter that night.) Last, but we hope not least, filmmaker George Butler, who introduced the world to a bodybuilder named Arnold Schwarzenegger in his 1977 documentary Pumping Iron and is at work on a film about his old friend John Kerry, is showing more than 30 years of his photographs of the candidate in "John Kerry: A Portrait 1969 to the Present" at gallery Kayafas, 450 Harrison Avenue in Boston; call (617) 482-0411.

— Carly Carioli and Nina MacLaughlin