It isn’t easy for a Democratic Party event to inspire bad press from its PR team, the mainstream media (MsM), but the party’s 2020 convention has managed to do just that. For many in the MsM, as well as among the general public, are describing the virtual event as like an “infomercial,” as boring, and as “unwatchable.”
The Daily Mail summarizes the story:
• Viewers were left struggling to connect with the DNC convention after it shifted to a virtual format for the first time in its history due to the COVID-19 pandemic
• A lack of live crowds and ‘stilted’ programming failed to excite the audience
• …The DNC began Monday night with a range of speakers, that included Michelle Obama, Bernie Sanders and George Floyd’s brothers
• The party decided to scrap an in-person event in exchange for two hours of programming each night from Monday through to Thursday this week
• The Republicans are opting for a similar model when they too take the Republican National Convention virtual in a four-day event next week.
A party generally enjoys a polling bump after its convention, but that may not happen this time around if the public response is any indication.
For example, “The DNC right now is like a 3am infomercial but has less sex appeal,” the Mail reported one person as tweeting Monday night.
“Watching DNC convention, five minutes in… LAME… BORING… EVA LONGORIA… who cares,” the paper related another as tweeting.
But that this opinion was reflected by MsM journalists is truly eyebrow-raising (most of the following tweets are courtesy of Breitbart).
Front page editor for the far-left Huffington Post, Philip Lewis, succinctly wrote:
The DNC so far feels like one long ad on YouTube you’d usually skip
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) August 18, 2020
One person, responding to Lewis’s tweet, apparently sarcastically, chimed in:
I’m enjoying it. The moment of silence was pretty cool!
— Jamerican (@JamericanMe) August 18, 2020
Another Lewis respondent replied:
Lots of entertaining youtubers and twitch streamers out there that regularly go 12-24 hours or more on their streams and keep them fresh and entertaining. Yet a group with a billion dollar war chest and limitless support from the entertainment industry cant do better than this?
— TheBrakShow (@Brakshowpkt) August 18, 2020
Next is New York Times columnist Charles Blow, who opined:
This is a good effort by the DNC, but you can already tell that a virtual convention is going to be tough.
— Charles M. Blow (@CharlesMBlow) August 18, 2020
Author Matt Stoller unwittingly paid the Democrats a compliment, writing:
This convention so far makes me think the Democrats are the party ready to lead America into the ’80s.
— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) August 18, 2020
If the Democrats really would lead us into the ’80s, I’d actually vote for them. The problem is that they’d lead us into pagan antiquity religiously, 1937 Germany politically, and the Marquis de Sade’s 18th-century castle morally.
Moving on, political television and radio host David Pakman, gnashing his teeth, implored:
Someone please talk me off the ledge. I want to win, and the first 22 minutes of this DNC…I’m scared. Can someone tell me how great this is or something?
— David Pakman (@dpakman) August 18, 2020
If that leap would take you from the Leftist plantation and into sanity, listen to me, Dave, jump, jump! (By the by, no one “wins” if the Democrats prevail in November.)
Then there’s Arizona Republic columnist Elvia Diaz:
Holy cow. I’m dying watching #DNC.
Message is good but wow, just unwatchable. pic.twitter.com/IADaBwyAid
— Elvia Diaz (@elviadiaz1) August 18, 2020
I’m not sure Elvia and I have the same definition of “good.”
Contributing editor for Rolling Stone Matt Taibbi was more amusing than the convention, for sure, tweeting:
The rules for tonight’s DNC drinking game, as well as the bingo card: https://t.co/vB8sA1VsbJ pic.twitter.com/AHCReSTKJ2
— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) August 18, 2020
And TV producer and academic Michael Tracey lamented:
Never could have guessed that the “reckoning with racial injustice” just automatically meant “elect Democrats”
— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) August 18, 2020
Michael, you have yet to learn the rules: With Democrats, everything automatically means “elect Democrats.” As a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) radical admitted in the 1960s, “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.”
If interested, below is a recap of last night’s titillating convention happenings courtesy of the Democratic National Committee. It’s less than two minutes long, so it shouldn’t put you to sleep. If you are concerned about slipping into the arms of Morpheus, however, do not click on the video! (I want you to read the rest of my article.)
ICYMI: Here’s a recap of Night of 1 at the 2020 #DemConvention. You don’t want to miss Night 2. Make sure to tune in at 9 p.m. ET: pic.twitter.com/TdbMsMK5rL
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) August 18, 2020
President Trump had predicted the Democratic Convention would be boring, and it wasn’t something hard to foretell. It was boring for the same reason leftist radio station Air America failed, Twitter just suspended satire sites’ accounts, Marxist Fidel Castro gave a nigh-on five-hour UN speech, left-wing California Governor Gavin Newsom rendered a 7 1/2-hour State of City address, and Bill Clinton’s autobiography, My Life (2004), was originally a painful 957 pages long.
As writer Hannah Arendt put it after observing Nazi war criminals in WWII’s wake, it’s called the “banality of evil.”
Malevolent but truly interesting people exist only in Hollywood fiction, where we find Silence of the Lambs’ ingenious serial killer Hannibal Lecter or Pulp Fiction’s philosophizing hit man Jules Winfield. In reality, evil people are often humorless and are generally shallow, self-centered, solipsistic, and vapid — dry as old bones.
This is no surprise. It has been said that Truth is a central ingredient of good humor, and it’s certainly necessary for substantive oratory. But evil people deny Truth and, too often deifying themselves, believe that every utterance disgorged from their inerrant lips is thoroughly stimulating. Instead of professing the one Truth pithily, they expound upon endless prevarications prodigiously.
So while the following counsel would be lost on them, the wise should note that Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount was only about 20 minutes long.
Of course, one could quip that when your platform is toxic, it’s best having people tune you out. After all, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has largely been hiding in his basement, so why shouldn’t the Democratic convention hide in banality?
All this said, our leftists may be boring. But should they take power, it won’t stop them from ensuring that, as that fictional Chinese curse goes, you “live in interesting times.”
Image: screenshot from YouTube video
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.