elephant in the convention

There's surprisingly limited information from outside the USA here on mainstream telly.

The only European news is either sport-related or about Pippa Middleton (and that news item is sponsored by the local Mercedes dealer).

The all-consuming story is the Cleveland Republican Convention, which to my English view comes across as something of a stage managed pantomime,

I don't think America really does panto (it doesn't even work in the spelling checker), although there's some fantastic explanations being rolled out for things like Mrs Trump plagiarising large chunks of one of Mrs Obama's old speeches.

There were plenty of denials earlier (oh no she didn't, etc) - that Mrs Trump had written it herself, then later it was with a team of writers, it's gradually all slid away (Oh yes, she did) and a hapless speech drafter has been found to take the hit.

Then we get Mr Christie, playing an oleaginous hit-man (look behind you), brought in to character assassinate Mrs Clinton. It's unremitting stuff with, by British standards, very unbalanced coverage.

Tonight's latest is Mr Gingrich explaining that Weapons of Mass Destruction are being assembled to nuke American cities.

Just in time for 'Designated Survivor' (aka Jack Bauer?) to be shown on US telly.

There's also been scarcely covered protests outside the conference, a collection of Republicans who are staunchly against their selected 'Over the Top' GOP candidate.

Not forgetting the booed speechmaker Ted Cruz who didn't endorse Trump and pointedly said 'vote with your conscience' just before Trump appeared.

Plus rumours that the funds are running out for the Republicans. Clinton has already spent $35m on television advertising, Trump hasn't used any direct TV adverts and despite their mogul identifying database called Themis, the backers (with a few exceptions like that Las Vegas Casino owner) seem hard to locate.

Naturally, all the 'best' speeches are timed to be around prime viewing times, along with some dynastic speechmaking by the rest of the Trump clan - some positioning already for 2020.

Presumably next week's Democrat session will be Clinton's equivalent event, with still months to the vote, which is hard to characterise even as a vote for the 'least worst'.

And whilst the current conference is going on, there's hardly a peep of news about anything else.

Well, except 1) The plague of nasty mosquitoes invading the USA, 2) the dangerous hotdogs that have been recalled across the whole country, 3) The massive sewage spill along Californian beaches 4) The continuing wild fires, like the one we saw yesterday quite close to the Hollywood sign.

Fire, poison, pestilence, flood...Hmmm.