CONVENTIONEERING: A scream to some is a song to others. A Photoshop-worthy commentary by Nick Welsh on Trump's acceptance speech can be found at independent.com/praisetrump.
Indy Staff

POLITRICKS: Watching a political convention is like tuning in to a baseball game when you already know the final score.

For the worst part of two weeks, it’s been TV Fright Night. We’ve suffered through vile personal attacks on two people, one of whom will be leading The Greatest Nation on Earth or, as Donald Trump puts it, a country that used to be great.

Barney Brantingham

Just what year, if any, we lost greatness he has not yet revealed.

Trump’s wife, “Slovakian eye candy,” as the amusing Calbuzz website calls her, told a TV audience of 40 million, “If you want someone to fight for you and your country, I can assure you he is the guy.”

Well, he’s also the guy who passed up his chance to really fight for the red, white, and blue by getting four (count ’em) draft deferments. But don’t blame Melania for that. Someone else wrote the speech, at least the plagiarist part where stuff was lifted from Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech.

(Accidents happen, but that was sloppy. Who’s going to be holding the nuke codes, by the way?)

Meanwhile, Demos are calling the election a choice between the frat rat and the sorority girl, a bad boy and Mary Poppins.

Republicans, never outdone in the character-assassination department, merely call Hillary Clinton a black widow killer (remember poor Vince Foster?), a commie harridan who changes her hairstyle way too often to be president, a real estate crook, and an email felon who should be in prison.

What we’ve got here, if you believe the TV rantings, are two tainted politico-celebrities whom no one seems to like very much, one sneering at Mexicans, Muslims, and women, the other trying to keep her pantsuit out of the murky in-sin-you-endo and fearing that at any minute someone will jump up and yell “Benghazi!”

Demos like to picture Hillary Clinton as someone’s sweet aunt, shocked at the sweaty GOP urchins getting dirty in the backyard. It’s the Brawling Braggart Bully who only occasionally flirts with the truth versus the evil femme fatale with a dagger in her garter.

The GOP made little effort to avoid looking like a White People’s Party in Cleveland, casting a pall of racism over the affair. The clincher was inviting Arizona’s Joe Arpaio, “America’s Toughest Sheriff” and long accused of a laundry list of abuses against Latinos, to be a closing-night speaker. He’s the kind of guy you keep under cover, not showcased. But the GOP seems to be racially tone-deaf.

Jerry Roberts reports that some people are asking, “Now who’s going to play right field for the Giants?” But then, voters can easily be confused amid all this if they mistake San Francisco’s Hunter Pence with Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, Trump’s veep choice.

As we all know, California gets the brush-off from both parties (except for money-raising) because everyone this side of the Electoral College knows that no matter what, the Golden State is going for the Demo candidate. Years ago, the Republicans were the chosen people, but that’s all over. And that’s politics, folks.

As a result, the Republicans assigned the California delegation to a hotel so far outside Cleveland that it takes email two days to get there. By the way, who’s to blame for both parties holding back-to-back presidential conventions in boring flyover cities?

The biggest news came the last day of the GOP convention. Roger Ailes, the man largely responsible for the conservative resurgence and arguably for Trump’s spectacular rise, was finally ousted at Fox News.

What decades of complaints about Fox bias couldn’t accomplish a sexual harassment suit by former anchor Gretchen Carlson did.

Ailes will get a huge golden parachute, reported to be $40 million. The question is, after Ailes ruled Fox News for 20 years, should one nonelected person wield so much unrestrained power over national affairs for so long? After all, even presidents only get eight years at most.

So now we have to wade through three-plus months of fearmongering and fact-checking for the political World Series in November. Look, can’t we just do it now? And please, for future political infomercials ​— ​I mean conventions ​— ​no more double-headers. I can’t take it.

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