• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, August 21, 2024

I do like to cover and write about the political conventions every four years, focusing generally on their TV aspects.

These include how TV brings the scene overall into viewers’ homes, how the candidates and speechmakers come off on TV, and how the various networks are covering them.

Only this summer, I’m feeling something that I suppose has always simmered just below the surface, which is this: It’s all a lot of BS, isn’t it?

Take Night One of the Democratic National Convention on Monday. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house when President Biden was introduced by his daughter Ashley and then took the stage to deliver what for all intents and purposes was a farewell speech and grand finale for his 50-plus years as a member of the Senate, vice president and then president.

The president was tearful too, and so was Vice President Harris in the audience, who was seen in a close-up with moist eyes and her right hand placed in the vicinity of her heart.

Members of the audience, famous or otherwise, were also seen alternately weeping and cheering “We love Joe.” 

When the president took the stage, suddenly hundreds of “We love Joe” signs were raised in the vast arena, and I thought to myself how generous the DNC was to spring for all the Joe signage.

The Democratic faithful who are filling Chicago’s United Center this week were understandably moved by the spectacle that they were having the opportunity to witness and experience in person.

I am sure many viewers watching at home felt the same way. We are a complicated country -- contentious and intolerant, but also acutely sentimental at those moments when an old soldier fades away. 

I often wish I could join them and feel the same emotions, but I cannot. I am a critic, therefore I criticize, I once wrote in a rare instance of introspection.

“It is not easy being critical, to engage sourly in a never-ending exercise in fault-finding,” I wrote about 10 years ago. “Over time, I found myself adopting an instinctually critical view of just about everything, TV or otherwise.” 

My problem is that I just don’t believe what any politician -- Democrat or Republican -- says, claims or promises.

The conventions are great TV shows in a way, but for me they are only great because they give me something to write about. That’s the challenge for those who write every day: Finding something to write about.

I suppose I am not the only one -- journalist or civilian -- who reacts cynically to these quadrennial exercises of political self-congratulation.

Take the Joe Biden farewell speech. Wasn’t he essentially pressured by powerful Democrats -- Pelosi, Harris, Schumer, et al -- to cede the nomination to the vice president? If so, why all the tears? 

Or am I reading too many Wall Street Journal op-eds and watching too much “Gutfeld!”? Probably, but don’t we all consume “too much” these days?

Such is the state of politics, the presidential nominating conventions and the media that covers them. It is a circus, but at the same time, circuses have long been a tradition in American life, and everybody loves them, right?