At the convention, the problem is compounded because in addition to the actual candidate some people want to see, we have days and days of speeches by other people, most of whom nobody wants to see. We also have speeches from the candidates’ families, which I think are meant to humanize the candidate but don’t work. We don’t need all those. Everyone knows that the speeches are written by committee ahead of time, just like movie screenplays. The Conventions might as well give us the full movie experience and hire Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hiddleston to read the speeches while making winsome faces. Or, just go ahead and show movies instead of speeches. They can be movies about presidents and politicians, just so everyone remembers what the purpose of the convention is; then the political party can just print the name of the candidate on everybody’s popcorn box and hand them out free of charge. I would pay good money to attend a political convention where we all ate snacks and watched All the President’s Men or Dr. Strangelove on the big screen.
3) Cosplay.  Everybody loves cosplay. Cosplay makes the world a better place. People are happier when they’re in costume. I think that no audience member, delegate or speaker should be allowed inside the Convention center without a costume. And I’m not talking about an Uncle Sam costume either; it should be something that expresses their inner geek. Geeks are good people. It would be far more humanizing than watching a candidate’s spouse and children mush-mouth their way through a speech, to see that candidate take the stage dressed as Steampunk Darth Vader or Lady Loki.
Let’s face it. Your average politician is every bit as self-serving, devious and wicked as your average Game of Thrones villain. So, imagine how exciting it would be to see Donald or Hillary take the stage in one of these elaborate Game of Thrones costumes:
(image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)
It’s been in the news lately that a standard-issue drab female politician pantsuit, identical to what you or I might buy for fifty bucks at Gabe’s, costs tens of thousands of dollars. Men’s suits are equal or worse. And male and female politicians spend ridiculous amounts of time getting their hair and makeup to look respectably frumpy. Why not channel all that time, money and expertise into something that people want to look at? I would attend a political convention that featured cosplay. Or maybe I would stay home and watch Game of Thrones, or Dr. Who, or Mr. Robot, or maybe I’ll dig out my old Farscape DVDs. Please note that anybody caught starting a combox debate about whether any of those shows, or any other shows for that matter, are immoral for Catholic audiences, will be sent to the kennel to play with Lord Ramsay Bolton’s hounds.
Maybe we should all stay home and watch Farscape. Or go to a museum. Or read Great Expectations, or put on a neighborhood Shakespeare play. Something that would actually add to the beauty in this miserable world, something that stands a chance of healing and humanizing us, which is what the arts do and the modern political circus usually does not. And after we do that, having become all that much more human, we can all research, reason, fast and pray, and go to the polls in November.
And if we can do all that after enjoying something worth enjoying, I don’t know that we need giant televised political conventions after all. They’ll keep on having them year after year, of course, because there’s money to be made. But no one can make us care, unless we want to. They certainly can’t make us take them seriously.
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