So Game Change premieres tonight on HBO, and I am honestly still unsure whether or not I will watch it. I’ve barely recovered from listening to that ignorant harpy in 2008 and am really not sure I can take a sustained two hour exposure to her tonight, even if it isn’t actually her. This may be one of those movies that is so painful I can only watch it in ten to fifteen minute increments.
Palin elicits feelings in me I am not proud of having, and this is a testament to what a truly ugly, awful human being she really is. Just the other day on Fox, she was there spewing her mindless bile, accusing the President of hating white people because of the color of their skin. She had the audacity to claim thet the nation’s first black President actually wanted to revert to pre-Civil war era racism. Why? Because Obama hugged his law professor 20+ years ago.
It’s really hard to measure what an awful, hideous, disgusting human being she is- a worthless sack of flesh whose only mission in life is to sow hatred and animosity, a sad soul with no ability to empathize or behave as a rational actor, and it is worth remembering that this foul beast almost was the Vice President of the United States. Thanks for that, John McCain.
It is my belief that without the elevation of Palin, in all her ugly ignorant glory, we wouldn’t have had the ascent and acceptance of the tea party. When Palin’s odious vitriol and ugly beliefs were mainstreamed, it paved the way for the Joe the Plumbers and the rest of the ugly uninformed orthogonian lumpenproletariat to wear their ignorance, racism, religious sophistry, hatred, and crude nativism as a badge of honor.
And that’s all I have to say about that.
Joseph Nobles
Come on, John. She nuzzles her young with an almost-human love.
dmsilev
Disagree, strongly. Palin is a symptom, not a cause. All that crap was there before McCain gave her a national stage. She may have focused it, but it was already there and absent Palin, it was still going to fester.
Patricia Kayden
I don’t think her portrayal in Game Change is sympathetic. Palin has spoken out against the movie, in fact.
My hesitation in watching the movie is that I cannot stand Halpern, who co-wrote the book. My workmate is going to watch it and I’ll get her take before wasting my time.
khead
I will catch it during the 564th showing on HBO57. Probably on a Tuesday afternoon.
Meanwhile, have some Gracie kitteh.
Gracie spent the afternoon lounging on my desk.
Mudge
The right will likely explode over the show. You know how they respond to truth. Your readership would be served if you watched it, so you can call bullshit at the show and at the responses. You’re good at that. Surely you have some scotch or bourbon around the house.
moonbat
I’m with you, JC, on not being able to stomach the sound of her voice or her stupid smug face spewing bile even if it is Julianne Moore doing the spewing. The sooner she’s relegated to late night infomercial land the happier I will be. And John McCain should always be scorned for foisting this proud know-nothing on the nation.
mellowjohn
“To play Sarah Palin, Julianne Moore needed hours of makeup and a lobotomy.” –Andy Borowitz
Snetzky
Palin only has a career because she represents all the people who ever felt inferior and put down for not being college graduates or for not having a clue about the world outside their own little corner of it. Palin’s natural constituency is are the people for whom high school was the high point of their lives.
David Koch
Yeah, but Julianne Moore is nice to look at.
gelfling545
A friend of mine just described Palin on facebook as an “illiterate squirrel.” I think that sums up in two words her educational attainments and her demeanor.
I believe that, while there was always a substratum of Palin types within the Republican party, it was largely kept under wraps. It took her elevation to VP candidate to make ignorance and hate “socially acceptable” to spew in public.
John Cole
@David Koch: So throw Boogie Nights in the dvd player.
demimondian
That should read *their* “ignorance, racism, religious sophistry, hatred, and crude nativism as a badge of honor”, John.
Otherwise, I haven’t got anything to add.
Jennifer
You may not watch it, but you know who WILL be watching?
Sarah Palin.
I predict the Facebook meltdown will start before the movie ends.
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
And yet she came within a whisker of being a heart beat away from leader of the free world. My worry is the testament of this fact for our national intelligence and animal sense of survival.
Don’t have HBO, or no Game Change, and wouldn’t watch it if I did. Who the fuck is Mark Halperin for one to get takes on history from? He is a fucking compromised moron, and all the hollywood teevee/movie fu cannot change that fact.
I will wait for the history books, as likely will have lots of time to read in my eternal lazy boy. Dirt recliner edition.
Meantime, tomorrow is where the action is.
Maude
Palin is the It Girl of hate politics.
Daaling
…but here is the funny part. You ‘used to be’ one of them Not Republican Cole and you cannot fix that kind of stupid. You still have that deep inside somewhere.
It still comes out once in awhile. Only a few months ago you were expressing interest in libertarian Gary Johnson’s opinions and every time a drone shoots a missle you go off on a rant claiming Jeebus must now kill a kitten or whatever.
Once a fool always a fool.
Snetzky
How did I end up in moderation for indicating that Palin’s constituency was people who thought high school was the high point of their lives. She thrives on the adulation of those who resent anyone who might have experience outside their own little corner of the world.
Raven
@Patricia Kayden: My sister spoke out against the “Last Temptation of Christ” and she never saw it. All reports are that it paints a very sympathetic portrait of her, she’s just too motherfucking stupid to check it out before she runs her mouth.
garage mahal
On a brighter note, around 50,000 of us rallied again in Madison.
Playing nice with these fuckers is never going to work.
JWL
Then again, her selection in 2008 may have also triggered events that will result in the dissolution of the republican party. That’s beginning to strike me as a real possibility.
I’d feel a whole lot better in that event, if only the country had a bona fide second party to fill the vacuum.
Daaling
@Snetzky: So you are comparing the Last Temptation of Christ to some stupid made for Cable movie about a nitwit former Beauty Queen turned politician?
Rrright.
schrodinger's cat
I think that honor goes to Bush, not Palin. He wore his ignorance as a badge of pride. Remember nookulear?
ETA: Have you forgotten the demonization of those who had the temerity to oppose the Iraq misadventure?
The Dangerman
Her supporters are not exactly sophisticated people; they voted for Bush because they wanted to have a beer with him and they voted for Palin because they wanted to fuck her.
These are people of the land. The common clay of the new America. You know … morons.
schrodinger's cat
I think Romney may pick Santorum as his running mate. That will probably eclipse the crazy that Palin brought.
Hillary Rettig
okay, so instead check out these Beetlecam pix of cute lions:
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/-beetlecam-captures-daily-life-of-lions-slideshow/
Snetzky
@Daaling: Troll says what?
Raven
@Daaling: No you dumbass, I’m comparing someone complaining about a film they didn’t see. And what the fuck does Snetzky have to do with it?
David Koch
Any one remember how our progressive betters (you know who they are), who were intensely bitter over Hillary’s defeat, wagged their fingers at us for criticizing McCain’s pick, saying it was sexism to say Palin was unqualified.
Good times.
sloan
Don’t hold back, John. Tell us what you really think!
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Meanwhile, Dan Riehl is lamenting the news, and declaring The Titanic likely isn’t sinking, it’s the motion of the liberal ocean to blame.
Cookie?
Studly Pantload, the emotionally unavailable unicorn
A promo for this show came on during a commercial break through which I was otherwise focused until a close shot of Palin popped up on my teebee screen. Upon which I instinctively shielded mine eyes from such an abomination, until after a second or two I realized it was the actress Julianne Moore simply nailing it.
That said, I don’t have HBO, so I’ll just have to sit passively by while awaiting whatever fallout may occur.
caring and sensitive
When Palin’s odious vitriol and ugly beliefs were mainstreamed, it paved the way for the Joe the Plumbers and the rest of the ugly uninformed orthogonian lumpenproletariat to wear their ignorance, racism, religious sophistry, hatred, and crude nativism as a badge of honor.
The next step in this process will be when the first repub says niCLANG out loud and the rest will then feel empowered to say what they really feel.
Splitting Image
Possibly, but keep in mind that the Republican primary this year is a re-run of 2008, with Romney in the John McCain role and Rick Santorum in the Mike Huckabee role. The GOP isn’t happy with its choices and is looking for a game changer.
Have you considered that Sarah Palin would be the perfect choice if St. John the Maverick hadn’t put her on the ticket four years ago and exposed her as an unqualified loon? If she were receiving a national roll-out now rather than four years ago, do you think she would have made as many rookie mistakes as she did in 2008?
Palin has to take her share of the blame for where the GOP has found itself, that’s true, but if she had remained holed up in Alaska, there are plenty of other people who would have gotten the ball rolling instead. Obama wouldn’t be any whiter if Palin hadn’t been on McCain’s ticket.
Odie Hugh Manatee
The resident ‘femifascist’ at Redstate announced a new PAC, ShePAC (pronounced sheep-ACK!), that is supposed to go after the nasty libruls who ‘Go Rush’ on honorable conservative women like Michelle Malkin. The dearth of comments there suggest that it will be another raging success story for the right.
And here I thought she was announcing a new farmers group that supports sheep.
loretta
I know cats that are better mothers, as Rhet Butler would say.
She is a horrible mother.
She elicits contempt from most women I know as well, for being a manifestation of all the WORST qualities of managerial women – incompetent, backstabbing, dishonest, cruel, cliquish, tribal, incompetent, lazy, thin-skinned, incompetent….
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
@Hillary Rettig:
They are so beautiful, King of Beasts.
PurpleGirl
@khead: Grace kitteh is cute.
PurpleGirl
AH, the movie is on HBO. Since I don’t subscribe I’ll miss it. I think I might watch some Tremors episodes on Hulu (free) instead.
cmorenc
@JWL:
In the meantime, it’s going to be a very close call whether they can manage to construct enough structural fortresses against being displaced and destroy enough of the foundations of progressive government before their decline becomes irreversibly fatal. Consider how much of the fate of this country is in the hands of one or two of the Supreme Court Justices who are too often in the 5-4 majority, should they decide to radically revisit the commerce clause, or seize any number of other available levers to hamstring the possibility of effective government. The 2010 elections, by handing redistricting at state and congressional level over in so many states to the GOP, probably succeeded in retarding their demographic doom by at least a decade; had the Dems succeeded in obtaining anything close to a standoff or even normal minor tide toward the minority party in an off-year election, the GOP would be screwed insofar as regaining control of the House of Representatives in the foreseeable future. If Romney does wind up narrowly defeating Obama and the GOP even narrowly controls all three branches of government, the GOP intends to very quickly send this country back to the status quo ante as it existed back in 1920 or even earlier, and will begin structural dismantling of Social Security, Medicare, Environmental Protection, etc. Even after someday regaining control over all three branches of government, it will take the dems two or three decades to get back to where we are now if that happens.
robertdsc-PowerBook
The only reason I would give this movie a watch is because Julianne Moore is my favorite actress.
muddy
She’s GWB in a skirt. My neighbor is very upset that she is not running, he registered to vote last year just for her. In his defense, he is brain damaged due to a barn wall collapsing on his head.
JoyceH
There are quite a few good decorating shows on HGTV this evening if you’re looking for something to watch. So much of their programming these days is about buying and selling (but mostly buying) real estate, that when they finally get back to the old fashioned basics about living in the house you live in, I think they should be encouraged.
Richard Shindledecker
Thank you Cole – Boogie Nights is going into my machine right NOW!
JGabriel
John Cole @ Top:
Actually, I think Nixon and Reagan did that. Palin, Joe the Plumber, and the Tea Partiers are what you get when the conservative parents of that generation raised their kids entirely from childhood in that world-view.
Seriously. Palin is only a year older than me, and the first president I remember is Nixon. I’m sure Nixon is the first president she remembers too.
.
lamh35
Fuck Dick Helparin. I refuse to give over any of my time to that bullshit movie. My time is too valuable.
loretta
@Jennifer: She will watch it, I’d bet her advance on that unreadable book she dictated.
She is far too vain not to watch.
metalgirl
@khead: What a gorgeous kitty — makes me want one but I’m not sure my Suzie Q would cooperate, seeing as how she pitches a fit when one of the 3 cats next door are within her view out the front windows. She treed the little one, Babyface, in our backyard the other morning and I had to take her for a walk to get her to come back in the house (while I had a fever, no less). Babyface was sunning herself on my front porch when we returned from our walk :)
John, I saw that clip of her on Fox, talking about Obama wanting us to take us back to the pre-Civil war days when people didn’t realize that we were all created equally. Since the Civil war, there has been equal opportunity for people to work hard, “develop natural resouces” (drill, baby, drill), and succeed. You could just see the wheels turning that she had absolutely no idea about where she was heading while making her word salad. I’m glad to know that the Civil war fixed all everything. Here’s a link to the clip if you haven’t seen it: http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/201203080019#.T1qalmzDAiQ.facebook
Joey Maloney
@Splitting Image:
Yes. Because she’s just as stupid and arrogant now as she was then.
Raven
@Richard Shindledecker: Her flying down that zip line in the Big Lebowski is priceless!
spellinge
@Snetzky: Weird coincidence? One of the main writer/producers for Game Change is Danny Strong, who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which among other things did a good job of dissecting high school politics. Probably just random, but it caught my eye.
Richard Shindledecker
FWIT the first president I remember is DDE and he’s still the last respectable Republican.
Nicole
I want to give you props for, other than the use of “harpy,” managing four paragraphs of insults without ever leaving gender-neutral territory.
Seriously, props. It’s lovely posts like this that makes it clear that there’s never a need to use gender-specific insults. We can be perfectly specific about what a horrible human being someone is, without making it about gender.
I’ll probably watch it. I think Julianne Moore is a terrific actor. And hey, the better guy won, so it won’t leave me shredded the way Recount did.
muddy
@Splitting Image: It would not matter if she practiced and was tutored for a hundred years, like the scorpion she can’t overcome her nature. The extra confidence would only make her worse.
Richard Shindledecker
@Raven – So true!
Jennifer
I’ll definitely watch it. HBO movies are pretty uniformly good.
khead
@PurpleGirl:
Thank you. She’s the middle child who grasps for all the attention she can get.
I help her, of course.
gene108
@Splitting Image:
You assume she’d have survived being governor of Alaska. There were scandals brewing about that caused her to bug out early in her first term.
Raven
@Richard Shindledecker: Look, the flying rig sold for 3k!
Jonathan
Look at this way…it’ll have a happier ending than Recount.
kuvasz
……”The Revenge of the C minus student.”
Dunning-Kruger, all the way.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
khead
@metalgirl:
Our SweetPea hates everyone. Except my wife, I guess. And me when it’s bedtime.
So we thought there was no way we could bring in even ONE other cat given SP. Meanwhile, two cats later…..
Just sayin’
Redshift
@Splitting Image:
Yup. The big story from everyone who worked with her in ’08 is that she’s completely immune to advice, briefing or coaching, because she’s always sure she knows better and anything that goes wrong is someone else’s fault. Nothing she’s done since suggests this has changed in the slightest.
(Not to mention that if she didn’t have high-powered national Republicans trying to make her less of an embarrassment, the only thing anyone would know about her is a scandal-plagued term as governor.)
Richard Shindledecker
Awesome – but I’m not goin there…
Raven
@Richard Shindledecker: It’s just an auction site.
gogol's wife
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero):
Luckily I don’t have HBO either. I don’t want to see Ed Harris portray McCain as a “decent man” (NYTimes). But Julianne Moore’s makeup job is truly impressive. She looks more like her than Tina Fey. Tina Fey’s essential niceness always came through and spoiled the illusion.
Mike in NC
HBO costs us an extra $17 a month, so we decided to drop it until “Game of Thrones” Season 2 appears.
MikeJ
@Mike in NC: I dropped HBO when I remembered I have a torrent client and I knwo how to use it.
Hal
Christopher Hitchens delivered what I have always felt was one of the most spot on analysis of Palin in Slate, way back in 2008…
John Weiss
Why does anyone pay attention to the ex-beauty queen? Has she even had something interesting to say?
Frankensteinbeck
@General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero): and John Cole:
No. Comfort yourself with this – she was never within a heartbeat of the presidency. She never had even a shot at becoming vice president. Random chance and McCain’s veniality started her on third base, and she didn’t just fail to make it to home. She was absolutely too incompetent to. Palin was an anchor around McCain’s neck, because her stupidity and grunting animal hatred repulsed most Americans. She could not have been polished up enough to win – McCain’s fixers complained repeatedly that she would not cooperate, could not be fixed. She did not become Vice President because she never had a shot at becoming Vice President. She never had a shot because the traits that make her so repulsive make her too wildly incompetent to win.
Ben Cisco
Won’t be watching. Cannot wait for her to fade into the richly-deserved depths of obscurity so deep that even the hallowed haunts of Z-listers will shun her for fear of damaging their brand.
__
Also, Halperin’s a big enough dick that even if he got this one right I STILL want nothing to do with it.
Richard Shindledecker
I know but my bent brain thinks I’m not sniffin the riggin!
metalgirl
@Hal: Hitchens nailed it. Thanks for sharing!
JGabriel
@Redshift:
Supposedly, even Roger Ailes was (and remains) fed up with Palin, after she ignored his advice not to respond to Gifford’s shooting with her blood libel charge.
.
Jay
@Maude:
“Palin is the It Girl of hate politics.”
The lead pinup for Freeper Vogue
SiubhanDuinne
@spellinge:
I don’t have HBO but I was invited to a preview screening of Game Change a couple of weeks ago. Danny Strong was at the reception before and in the audience, and then answered questions for close to an hour afterwards. I was impressed with him, and as main screenwriter he did a good job. It’s far from the best or most memorable film I’ve ever seen, but it’s very funny in spots, Julianne Moore is uncannily Palin-like, all the principals do a fine job, and I think it’s worth watching if you have the opportunity. It has nothing whatsoever to do with my views on Palin or McCain or Halperin, but as a damn movie there are worse things you could do with a two-hour block of time.
Jeffro
@schrodinger’s cat: Never happen. Would ruin his ability to ‘move to the middle’ for the general and there are much better* choices with much less baggage: Rubio, Barbour, Daniels, Christie, Haley, etc.
*better for him in the election…certainly not intended as a statement of their quality as human beings…
jharp
Rarely watch TV. Almost never. Don’t really even know how to work the T.V. And Palin repulses me.
Therefore I will watch Game Changer tonight. Just figured out to get the TV turned on. And found HBO after looking through a mere 700 channels.
Dilbatt
I am absolutely going to watch it. Have you looked at the cast? It’s perfect. Besides, Tweety recommended it.
Jess
But you were on such a great roll…
How closely is this based on the book, I wonder? It was a damn good read, I have to say.
J. Michael Neal
@Mike in NC: Just wait until they air Game Change of Thrones.
JGabriel
@schrodinger’s cat:
NE Mormon Republican picks NE Catholic Republican?
Seems unlikely. Romney will probably pick a white Baptist from the Plains (specifically the N. Dakota to Texas mid-country pipe) or, more likely, the South, to shore up the evangelical/fundamentalist base.
.
GARY CAMPBELL
@moonbat: It’s funny you say that about McCain. I believe he almost had the respect of the country until he showed what an absolute kook he was when he selected BimboBrain. I really think the way he was looking at her but that he thought he was going to get some. You could see it in his feeble mind.
Boy that was a close call on electing the clown car.
When you know about McCain’s true past it comes clear that he was NEVER a qualified candidate for anything other than possibly jail.
Didn’t he leave his first wife while she was in the hospital injured in an accident?
What a piece of shi….er….trash!
Truthdogg
I don’t get HBO, but if it doesn’t have extended scenes of Sarah and Todd constantly googling their names with a laptop on the tour bus, then Halperin didnt get the story right.
samara morgan
@Hal: aww you left out my favorite part– Hitch also said she was “cockteasing the base.”
Quite simply, Palin killed the GOP. She refused to play galatea to Team McCain’s pygmalion. That is the subject of this movie and Schmidts book.
The old white guys tried to use her, but she was a blade that turned in their hand. Palin is why the elites are having such a tough time cramming Romney down the bases throat.
the GOP base is now 50% WEC. SOME of those people are just not gunna vote mormon.
praps just a tiny percentage, but Mitt needs EVERY white vote he can get.
And im having a game change party. she cant come back from this.
;)
game change is playin at mah house, at mah house
let me show you the ropes kid, show you the ropes.
dww44
@Daaling: You’re definitely proof that JC and BJ are tolerant and open minded. Don’t try that over at the GOS where I recc’d a comment a few days ago in an anti-Limbaugh diary. So, when I visited the site yesterday afternoon, lo and behold, I’m warned for uprating a “blatantly” anti-semitic comment and must acknowledge the error of my ways before I am allowed back on. The thing is I didn’t even remember the comment as being anti-semitic and apparently that whole “meta” portion of the diary has now been excised. Talk about being transported back to middle school when the teacher punished the whole class, because while most were not guilty of wrongdoing they must be shown the error of their ways, just because.
chrome agnomen
@Jess:
i hope it’s closer than ‘forrest gump the movie’ was to the book
dww44
@JoyceH: So true re HGTV. And what about the Food Network and all the flaming cupcake Wars, Chopped, and other such competitions. Ain’t nothing worth watching on that network after 5 p.m.
spellinge
@SiubhanDuinne: I don’t have HBO either, but I definitely would be interested in seeing it at some point. As for Danny Strong, glad to see he has a career beyond Buffy – I don’t know if it’s because he had a small but recurring role on a UPN/WB show or because there are ten thousand viewing options on TV these days, but glad to see someone can have a career beyond that kind of thing (I’m thinking in particular of the guy who played Cliff Claven and the guy who played Frank Burns as examples of career killers, if you will – maybe Kramer too, if those are too “I’m old” references).
jharp
23 minutes into Game Change I’m out. Good grief.
Why the fuck I have HBO I’ll never get.
Mike in NC
@JGabriel:
Mitt should pick Newt for VP! That would be some awesome suckitude. We’d be dragged into a Black Hole of nihilism.
KS in MA
@khead: Aww! She’s beautiful!
Uncle Cosmo
Just remember, folks, that four-fifths of “Palin” is PAIN. And the other fifth is L, as in “Why this is L, nor am I out of it…”
(& that’s all I have to say about that…)
Dr. Loveless
@J. Michael Neal:
“Mittens Is Coming.”
+3
Paul in KY
@Redshift: I love it that she didn’t even know who we fought in WW I and II! Her father was a history teacher at her HS. I expect she got As in the class.