Reckless Disregard: The Politics of Insincerity

Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit, as George Orwell put it in regard to the English language, that the American political convention, once a dynamic and informative institution, has morphed into a peculiar spectacle valued more for its flamboyance than its relevance, so when the opportunity arose to attend the 2012 edition of the GOP’s quadrennial shindig in Tampa as a member of the press, the temptation to jump on a plane and indulge in a little amateur anthropology—the Republicans were as exotic as Trobriand Islanders to this writer—proved irresistible.