Tonight's TV Schedule. What to Watch?

By Alan Caruba

Decisions, decisions. What to watch tonight? Turns out that, starting on Monday, all the television networks have decided that 10 PM is soon enough to go live at the Democrat Convention. This means most viewers will still be able to watch NBC’s “Deal or No Deal.”

Come to think of it, that’s a pretty good description of both conventions!

As for watching either or both, it’s more like watching a very long infomercial because that’s what political conventions have become. I suspect most Americans are quite unaware that prior to the television age, they were contentious affairs that often required many ballots before a nominee would be selected. They were smoke-filled, the booze flowed freely, and you couldn’t find a woman on the convention floor because they didn’t gain the right to vote until 1920. It took that long for the national woman’s suffrage movement to get a constitutional amendment passed and ratified.

We’ve had two women as Secretary of State in recent years and any number of Cabinet Secretaries since the days of FDR. We have a complete idiot as Speaker of the House and now they want one to be President! I’m telling you, it’s scary!

The conventions today are carefully scripted with the main speakers having been told what topic to address as opposed to speaking about something that might really matter to them. I am pretty sure that Bill Clinton would like to give a speech on his eight years in office, skipping over the impeachment part, but alas he will have to swallow his pride and hurt feelings to mouth some inanities about how great it is to be supporting Barack Obama. Hillary, too, will have to hold back her tears and tell her delegates to vote for that black guy who stole the nomination from her.

If you don’t want to sit through the entire session that will be provided on public television channels, you can turn to either “Prison Break” or “High School Musical”, “Decision House” or “Gossip Girl.” Any one of these would make for some light diversion from a succession of speeches about how totally fabulous Barack Obama is. We already know how fabulous he is. All we need do is read his autobiography.

Jerome Corsi gives another version in “Obama Nation” that includes some very inconvenient truths.

Presumably, the McCain campaign will be the “Gossip Girl” to provide some juicy items for us to contemplate. They have already had to respond to Madonna’s comparison of John McCain to Hitler. This is what we have come to expect from liberals.

It’s the same with the current Democrat mantra that McCain owns seven houses. He owns a home in Sedona, Arizona. I doubt he has ever stepped foot in the other real estate investments that are owned by his wife of 29 years. Apparently, being married to a wealthy wife is only acceptable if you’re John Kerry.

Oddly, the Democrats will be campaigning hard against anyone who’s rich. Millionaires = bad. Minimum wage workers = good. What this ignores is that those workers all want to be millionaires and, in America, they have a fair chance of achieving that dream. Obama has made it clear that, if elected, he wants to tax the daylights out of anyone or any couple making enough to own a home or put a kid through college these days.

I’m guessing, but I think that network ratings for the Democrat Convention will fall well below those for the recently completed Olympics. This may well be the case for the Republicans too. We have all been through a year of primary elections and are in count-down mode to get the national elections behind us.

I’m thinking that documentary on wild giraffes battling for mating rights should be interesting this evening.