Why do these conventions run so late?

So once again, the only thing of the evening I want to see at the convention is on at 10 p.m. Like waiting for my man Joe last night. These people are keeping me up past my bedtime.

And why is that? It’s certainly not for the benefit of the delegates. The state delegations — South Carolina, anyway — have their daily meeting at some ungodly hour like 7:30 a.m., and then the next thing worth paying attention to is some speech at 10 p.m., and they all go out afterwards. No way to live, even for a week. It’s never made any sense to me.

Do the parties not think that maybe, just maybe, kids ought to be able to watch these things and learn a bit about their country’s political system? Yeah, I know, that’s a setup for cynical jokes about things not being fit for children’s eyes, but seriously — for good or ill, it’s educational.

Anyway, the schedules make no sense to me. But neither do a lot of other things about political parties.

But I’ll stay up. Hey, if I hadn’t stayed up last night I would have missed Joe, and that was the best speech of either convention so far. No, Joe’s no barnburner of a speaker, but it was what he had to say. The partisans in the hall didn’t know whether to clap or not at his best lines, because it was an UnParty speech, and not their sort of thing at all. I loved it.

6 thoughts on “Why do these conventions run so late?”

  1. Tim

    You really are a member of the Eastern librul media elite, ain’t ya, boy? The main speeches start at 10 so people on the West Coast get a chance to get home and watch them, too. Jeez, the world doesn’t revolve around the eastern seaboard, you left-wing media maven.

  2. weldon VII

    Yes, Brad, I’ve come out of retirement for this one.
    Pretty amazing, ain’t it, considering you’ve lived it Hawaii, Kansas, Tennessee, South Carolina and — what was it, Ecuador? — that it wouldn’t dawn on you that a 9:30 speech in Minnesota is a 7:30 speech in California, a 10:30 speech in South Carolina and a 6:30 speech in Alaska?
    Sometimes you are just a babe in the woods, Brad, and not the kind of babe you were calling Sarah Palin, either.
    Oops, penultimo’s coming. Gotta go.

  3. Brad Warthen

    Yeah, I get that. But back when I lived in Hawaii, we saw everything a week later, and we LIKED it. When I lived in Ecuador, we kept our TV in storage, because there was nothing to watch.
    In Kansas and Tennessee, it still would have been a bit late for the kiddies.
    So we’re doing this for what — for California? Ah-nold can watch it out in his smoking tent before he leaves the office.

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