The R.N.C. on TV: The Ted Wedding

Well, there's one thing you have to say about last night at the Republican National Convention: it made for great live television. You couldn't look away, even if you wanted to. "And to those listening," Senator Ted Cruz said, standing before an arena of Republican delegates, with his usual gaze of sorrowful, slightly melted condescension. Don't stay home in November." It was a deliberate, extended pause. The senator from Texas is a debater, and that pulled-taffy silence was as crucial as anything that he'd been saying for the past fifteen minutes, during which his speech was met with cheers. The silence allowed a cathartic energy to well up--and then there was a different kind of roar, nothing at all like the raucous "U.S.A.! U.S.A!" that had punctuated earlier sections. From home, it looked for a moment like Cruz might actually endorse Trump, despite the coded put-downs that preceded the pause. But, of course, that wasn't Cruz's plan at all--and he knew it, and the New York delegation very likely knew it. To add to the tension, there was something genuinely unexplainable happening on the massive screen behind Cruz, which showed images of the waving American flag and the U.S. Constitution. A square in the upper left corner sputtered black. Segments mysteriously slid back and forth, as in a video-game glitch. For a moment, the entire screen blacked out fully, leaving a tiny Cruz standing alone against the black void. A friend who was attending the event told me that she half-expected that vigilante hackers--à la "Mr.