Conventional

Back when I worked for a newspaper in 1988, I wrote a story about how much local video store owners looked forward to the major party conventions. Networks used to pre-empt a whole week’s worth of shows for “complete coverage,” gavel-to-gavel.

Young me was aghast at how civically irresponsible this was, because the idea that conventions mattered still lingered in the body politic and in me as well. The reality that conventions were useless multi-night commercials, stage managed down to the last robotic smile, didn’t sink in for a couple more cycles. If the few minutes I caught of tonight’s Democratic National Convention indicate anything, it’s that, like scientists trying to drain that last degree of warmth in order reach absolute zero, the virtual conventions of 2020 are straining toward absolute irrelevance.

Good think we’ve got Netflix...