I got some negative feedback for my unenthralled response to Chris Christie's convention speech. But if anybody thinks my reporting was disenchanted, let me introduce you to some Nobel-prize-winning buzzkill: VS Naipaul's almost super-humanly grouchy reporting from the 1984 Republican convention in Dallas. (H/T Kapil Komireddii)

The speaker at the lectern was winding up on the theme of liberals. “They’re not soft on communism…. They’ve been softened up by communism.” The speaker was a big man in a dark blue suit; there was a suggestion of flabbiness, loose flesh, below the waist. The lectern was stamped “Sheraton-Dallas Hotel & Towers,” in case someone took a photograph: everyone, after all, had something to sell. To the speaker’s right was a US flag, hanging down from a pole; beside that was a portable film screen.

And so it goes on and on, in the most dispiriting way possible. It's a good reminder, whatever you think of the message at a convention - any convention - if you don't enjoy the spectacle, you should stay home.