When we want your opinion, we'll tell it to you.

Now that the Republican and Democratic conventions have skulked into history--the ash heap of history as Trotsky might have said, I've had a chance to reflect a bit on what we viewed.

But first, this. Recently I bought a four-dvd set of the entire first season of the classic 60s television show "Get Smart." Get Smart was pretty good stuff. Mel Brooks and Buck Henry were no slouches as comedy writers and Don Adams had timing and facial expressions nearly equal to great film comedians like Laurel and Hardy or Harold Lloyd.

Despite the talent involved with Get Smart, however, some producer somewhere felt the need to add a laugh track. A laugh track, that is, "you don't know what's funny, we, the producers (or sponsors) don't trust your ability to think or react, so we'll prompt reactions via sound design."

Now back to Denver and St. Paul. Spout lies, half-truths, over-simplifications and paeans to pusillanimity--then cut to the blondes in the audience lapping it up, laughing, clapping, ooooohing and ahhhhing as they're told.

This is what we've become reduced to. We don't think. We respond to cues.