"The Parasite Has Consumed the Host"

Shafer and Ferguson:

Why do the parties throw their meaningless conventions? As Andrew Ferguson wrote in the Weekly Standard four years ago, the no-news extravaganza of a convention is excellent news for them. But what excuse do thousands of reporters have for attending? According to Ferguson, in the weeks leading up to the conventions, the press traditionally complains about the "empty ritual" of the "infomercial" that the parties have "choreographed." But that's just for show. They fight their colleagues for the honor to attend because a political convention is a gas to cover. It's like a vacation, only no spouses! There's free food, plenty of booze, nice hotels, lots of pals in the press and politics dishing gossip, and the assignment is easy to report. Ferguson concludes that political conventions exist only to make the second convention—the "journalists' convention"—possible. "The parasite has consumed the host," he wrote.

If the political press corps were honest, they'd start every convention story with the finding that nothing important happened that day and that your attention is not needed. . . .