A friend wrote me of Clint Eastwood’s star turn last week:
I have a theory that all celebrities who support the republican causes, other than being violent characters, have a hard time separating their film careers and roles from their personal identity. Heston, Schwarzenegger, Eastwood, chuck Norris. Weird, right? (Oops, and forgot the most famous, reagan.)
I think this is right. The key point here, however, is that Reagan and Ahnold and, to some extent, Heston were successful politically, whereas Eastwood’s speech was a big dud. Reagan and Ahnold were content to recite lines from movies. The fact they couldn’t distinguish life from movies made their recitations that much more convincing. But they never dressed up as terminators or 1920s football players at political events.
Clint took it all too far with the chair and the ten minute monologue. Of course, the real wingers are saying it was great success, having their own crazy empty chair days and claiming AMC is doing an Eastwood marathon this week because they loved the empty chair stunt so much.
And they probably believe it. Yes, it’s the echo chamber/epistemic closure thing, but it goes beyond that: it illustrates how complex and indecipherable their own mythology has become.
One summer when I was a teen-ager, I had a friend who was into Renaissance Faires, and kept a suit of faux chain-mail in his closet. I remember enacting some incredibly elaborate sword fight with him where I dutifully continued to fight with my left hand (Monty Pyton style) after my right was imaginarily cut by his mighty wooden sword. It was fun, but I never imagined that a national audience would have understood — much less enjoyed watching — it.
If one of the Republican speakers had taken the stage dressed as one of the 300 and battered an imaginary Obama with a sword, or whatever the 300 fought with, there’s be a hashtag #ObamaImaginarySword right now, and Michelle Malkin would claim it was taking the internets by storm.
Violet
If only they’d thought of this!
Marc
That would totally be taking the internets by storm–but it wouldn’t be the endorsement Malkin thinks it is.
We’re laughing at you, Michelle, not with you.
Frankensteinbeck
I don’t know what was more sad, Clint’s stumbling, half-coherent delivery or the way his imaginary Obama wasn’t even a good strawman. Anybody who’s heard Obama speak instantly dismisses the entire dialog when Eastwood claims Obama swore at him. Obama has completely successfully sold his ‘only adult in the room’ image, and even to the least politically informed Eastwood looked.. sad. Pitiable and deranged.
There is no room for honest interpretations that Eastwood’s performance worked. Reactions to it are a pure test of how deeply the viewer lives in the Echo Chamber. Could be a useful way to judge pundits.
Anya
DougJ, you don’t understand, so don’t even try to analyze it. Republicans are imaginative, bless their little hearts.
Zifnab
Winning!
mikej
@Violet: Instead they kept their greased up rent boys hidden.
Linda Featheringill
The empty chair thing is a theatrical tool of some history and respectability. The problem, however, is that you have to make your audience believe that the chair truly represents the person you’re talking to.
Clint failed in that respect. The imaginary comments from the chair were so out of character from the president that his performance destroyed the suspension of disbelief in the viewer.
He did succeed in creating an alter ego. What we had was Clint talking to Clint. Maybe one part of Clint does tell the other part to go fuck himself. I can understand that.
But as a critique of Obama, it failed.
Calming Influence
Reagan kicked some serious ass in Bedtime For Bonzo.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
And Steven Segal (google it), Stallone and Bruce Willis. And Jon Cryer and Cliff Clavin.
Maybe the weirdest thing of night was the applause was just as big, from what I could judge, when Eastwood blamed Obama for going to war in Afghanistan as when Romney blamed him for not going to war with Russia and Iran. They really are just incoherent goons.
Anya
@Frankensteinbeck: I think even Clint Eastwood was ashamed of his performance. Why else would he “take a vacation” immediately after his converstation with the empty chair?
But what I want to know is, did he lose all his money in some sort of a ponzi scheme? Why did he subject himself to this and why is his wife doing a reality show?
Cris (without an H)
I’ll suggest Kelsey Grammer as an exception. But I also gather he’s the “governor of Massachussets” kind of conservative, not the “House Rep from Georgia” kind.
eric
Remember, these are the same people that thing Sparta was a democracy so that they can infuse their keyboard instruments of battle, i.e., keyboards and pens, with the passion and verility of an imaginary people.
Ann Rynd
Jeff Bridges was on Morning Joke today acting just as nutty as Clint. These guys who have been stars forever lose something inside that, missing it, they seem to all behave the same way. It’s somewhere between performance and psychopathy. They are not fully human any more. Even Paul Newman did it although he tried not to.
Fame is like rust.
Hawes
Did anyone see Colbert debate Eastwood’s chair? The chair wiped the floor with him. Eastwood was lucky to get off the stage in one piece.
PurpleGirl
It isn’t only the actors who don’t (always) distinguish between real life and their acting roles. It is often the fans too.
I have a friend who lives in Los Angeles and voted for Arnold. He then was surprised by a number of his actions as governor. I mentioned one day that Arnold was for gun control and my friend sputtered “but, but, the movies, the big guns…” and I told him “remember Arnold is from Austria where they have strict gun laws and he’s married to a Kennedy. Arnold is an actor. The guns are PROPS.”
(Yes, my friend likes guns. But I also convinced him to vote for Barack Obama in 2008 and he’ll vote for him again. He’s had economic problems for a few years now and understands things in different ways than he once did.)
eric
@Anya: i would not be shocked if he felt some sort of “buyer’s remorse” over the super bowl ad from his GOP friends for giving the impression that he supported Obama.
Punchy
What does Sullivan think of faux chain-mail?
gogol's wife
@Frankensteinbeck:
Very true. And evoking Biden in that moment was so lame. Biden did not swear in anger at anyone, the way Dick Cheney did (the actual referent of Eastwood’s supposed humor). Biden’s use of the word was in joyful congratulation, the opposite of Cheney’s vile malice and spite.
redshirt
Republican Mythology is easy to understand if you look beyond the particulars. It’s pure Post Modernism, to wit: There is no Truth but what we say is True, today. It could change tomorrow and contradict yesterday’s Truth, but that matters not. Win the day!
scav
It also skated way too near the easy default image of cray old buy shouting at things to work well in a party trying (at least in part) to convince everyone they aren’t exactly that. Detect freaking obvious, but it somehow slipped though and aired. Fractured, divided, piss-poor management — that in itself makes the event fascinating.
gnomedad
@Linda Featheringill:
Except, of course, for the True Believers, for whom any slam on Obama is true and wildly successful by definition.
Villago Delenda Est
@Linda Featheringill:
Ah, but you see, Linda, the Obama in the chair is the one the Rethugs imagine. Stepin Fetchit, dumb as a post. The one who needs a teleprompter. The one who cannot possibly be kicking their asses all over the country right now because he’s just a stupid ni*CLANG*.
That’s the only Obama they know. Which is why they will lose. They do not know their adversary.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@PurpleGirl: good point, I remember seeing exit interviews on election day, one guy in particular saying “we need a governor the legislature will be afraid of” and thinking “Oh my god, he thinks he just voted for the Terminator”.
@gogol’s wife: I think if I hadn’t known the context, and I saw a clip of Eastwood saying “You want me to tell Romney to go what himself?”, I would’ve thought he was doing an anti-Romney thing.
Keith
The speech notwithstanding, Eastwood parlayed his acting career into a somewhat successful (albeit brief) political career when he was the mayor of some small town in California back in the 80s or 90s.
Cris (without an H)
curse you, autocorrect
Villago Delenda Est
@scav:
It’s telling that the Rmoney minions demanded that, in exchange for a spot on the podium, Ron Paul’s remarks had to be vetted in advance and include an explicit endorsement of Rmoney.
Eastwood was not vetted in any way. He asked for the chair nearly when he went on stage, it wasn’t planned in advance, unlike nearly everything else.
Ann Rynd
The company that made the chair that Clint used just sent me an email asking if I wanted a chair that would make my day. Clever, that.
DougJ
@Punchy:
Seems like it’d be up his alley, no? Don’t UK conservatives go for that kind of thing in general?
Snarki, child of Loki
if “empty chair days” catches on, I am totally registering YELLINGATFURNITURE.COM.
None of you rat-weasels better try to snatch it first
Dennis SGMM
@redshirt:
I think that you nailed it. Their collective amnesia regarding the G.W. Bush years and Romney’s straight-faced repudiation of everything that he did as Mass. governor bear out your contention.
That aspect of today’s Republicans is strange to me because I can clearly remember them campaigning vigorously (Carter years?) against moral relativism. Somehow, in the intervening time, reality relativism has become acceptable to them.
Dennis SGMM
@Snarki, child of Loki:
I’ve been with GoDaddy since they had a dozen employees. Draw!
Villago Delenda Est
@Dennis SGMM:
It’s not just acceptable, it’s required.
They have read Nineteen Eighty-Four as an instruction manual, not a warning.
scav
@Cris (without an H): yep, and my edit button has gone walkabout. any button near the space bar is acting odd on this keyboard. Or I now have dyslexic fingers.
@Villago Delenda Est: and, yes on the Romney campaign being in apparently full control of that one. GSD they are inconsistent. Don’t give the impression of being familiar with selling products long-term at all, just writing tricky contracts and strong-arming copy / statements.
Frankensteinbeck
@Dennis SGMM:
This is tribalism. When anthropologists investigate tribal conflicts in the poorest and least educated parts of the world, this is what they run into. If there is a disagreement between your tribe and the other tribe, your tribe is ALWAYS right. No matter what. Elaborate stories are often concocted spontaneously and treated as absolute truth to explain it, but there doesn’t actually need to be explanation or consistency. Clint was slamming Obama, therefor they agreed with it. Period.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est:
This. Exactly. The Obama of Republicans’ fevered imaginations is the one Eastwood portrayed in the chair. Angry. Dumb. Foul-mouthed. That’s how they think of him. They do not know him.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Ann Rynd:
__
Fame never sleeps?
Dennis SGMM
@Villago Delenda Est:
Oh, fuck me. “Whoever controls the past, controls the present.”
scav
@Frankensteinbeck: They just chose to recognize the behavior in tribal contexts, it might actually be more pernicious in its effects in groupings with more ingrained and default obedience to fixed hierarchies of control. The applause light went on, the crowd clapped.
trollhattan
To boil it down to a word: projection. The true believers hear and see what they choose, irrespective of what’s said and done. Clint could have stood there grabbing his crotch for ten minutes and the crowd would have gone wild. Afterward, the usual suspects would have nodded and intoned how Obama just got served.
Consider Arnold. He basically shows up on Leno, announces his run and bam, the governorship was his. (It was almost literally that easy.) For those with good memories, the next couple of months saw the right wing elevating eliminating the constitutional requirement that presidents be born in the U.S. “Why shoud we deprive ourselves of perfectly well-suited candidates because of some irrelevant technicality? We’re a nation of immigrants.”
Aaaaand then, Arnold began governating and revealed the “moderate” he had always been (for those who paid attention to what he actually said and did) and his wingnut support died out and the constitution was preserved in time to attack our Kenyan in Chief with a rolled-up copy.
Whew, that was close.
Projection is a powerful thing.
Applejinx
@gogol’s wife:
Whoa. You’re right. Just as
-it was actually Bush who got us into Afghanistan
-it’s actually Romney who is a Harvard lawyer
it is actually Cheney who said ‘go fuck yourself’.
It’s all just too pointed. Like hell that guy is senile. It’s only the greatest troll in all history, people- I think I may have been the first to call it, this is not changing my mind.
Huh. Cheney targeted, too?
Dennis SGMM
@Frankensteinbeck:
I never went far into Anthro although I did date an Anthro major in my Berkeley Days (Lapses off into long reverie). Oh, yes, back on topic, even when the Republicans had effective control of all three branches of government I seem to recall that they still whined about being besieged by the forces of evil.
I still posit that they are trying to portray this election as the White Man’s Last Stand and the tribal element fits neatly, I think, into that.
ellennelle
um, how was heston more successful politically than eastwood? eastwood served as mayor of carmel, as a nonpartisan candidate, by the by. and was thereafter appointed by dem gray davis to some CA environmental council, and was then re-appointed to that by ahnuld.
roc
I’m not sure if that was intentional, but it immediately suggests Frank Miller: another longtime conservative creative who has a problem separating testosterone-fueled fantasy from reality and a now-fairly-openly-displayed crush on fascism.
Suffern ACE
@gogol’s wife: There was only one chair. I guess that was the problem of the whole swearing thing. I couldn’t imagine Biden and Obama sitting in the same chair. Maybe Biden was standing next to the chair, but there should have been two chairs. Staging!
trollhattan
@Keith:
“Carmel by the Sea” He became mayor because he was pissed that he couldn’t build a parking lot for his restaurant, or somesuch, and I guess he figured out if he was “in charge” he could roll the bulldozers on Wednesday, after winning Tuesday.
There’s always an angle.
Fly in that ointment is Carmel’s population ranges from wealthy to extremely wealthy, and they generally want things kept “just so.”
redshirt
@Villago Delenda Est: “1984 as an instruction manual”. No doubt – 100% correct.
The other book which aptly (and scarily) describes our times is “The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood.
Dennis SGMM
@redshirt:
I read it back in the late Eighties. I believe that we were somewhere in a Reagan administration at the time. I remember thinking that Holy shit, America could totally go for this!
redshirt
@Dennis SGMM: Same here. I’m going to re-read it (and “1984”) to give myself a good scare.
The Populist
These empty chair events are quite funny. It’s so bizarre to see them get worked up everytime legit criticism is leveled against their own. Problem is Clint Eastwood isn’t completely one of them. He supports gay rights, environmental issues and women’s issues. He’s just an angry, selfish guy and that makes him a perfect GOP prop.
GxB
As Mahrer summed up, the whole incident reflects the repub efforts of the last four years quite well – A cranky old white guy arguing with an Obama that doesn’t exist.
Then I was then scratching my head a few minutes later at how much Mahrer was starbursting over Clint’s, uh, performance. Saying words to the effect of “He went out there cold and killed…” Implying that it was objectively a well done bit of theater and not just pandering to the choir.
What? Christ it was painful to look at, and I’d say the same had it been unabashedly pro-Obama. Then again Bill has some gaping blind-spots that will always have me a bit reticent on defending him.
Dennis SGMM
@redshirt:
The thing that makes me wonder if I somehow woke up in an alternate universe is that the GOP made Red Scares and Commie baiting into part of their brand yet to me they seem to adopted all of the tactics of those whom they professed to despise.
Edit: I think that they envy the ability of others to elicit the support of their respective government no matter how much they fuck over their supporters.
El Cruzado
@Punchy: That’s nuthin’. MY renaissance-loving friends keep suits of REAL chainmail in their closets.
redshirt
@Dennis SGMM: Just so. As I posted in the thread below, it’s like we’ve entered an alternative reality where everything is opposite what it should be. These Republicans would be right at home at the heights of Pravda level Communist spin – “TURNIP HARVEST AT ALL TIME HIGHS! Take that, Capitalistards!”
cckids
@eric:
The thing is, the same person cannot truly mean the things Eastwood said in the Super Bowl ad AND put on the sad side show we saw the other night while honestly endorsing Romney. Does. not. compute.
Since no-one paid him for the endorsement or (supposedly) for the performance art last week, I can only conclude that the Super Bowl ad was just a paid piece, an accomplished actor speaking his lines. Nothing else makes sense.
Frankensteinbeck
@Dennis SGMM:
The projection, the fear, the tribalism, the swallowing of obviously counterfactual shibboleths (particularly birtherism), the racism, the regression to tactics that haven’t worked in so long they’ve almost been forgotten, the misogyny, the all-around xenophobia, the boiling anger that they can only put meaningless dogma words on, the hypocricy, the sudden uptick in policies that oppress minorities, the rabid enthusiasm for any policy that hurts anyone, the bizarre strawmen characterizations of their opponents… and more besides. It ALL ties together into one huge knot of lizard brain behavior, all interacting and pushing each other. Something pushed a bunch of people already leaning to this kind of crap over the edge. I personally think it was the shock of a black man being elected president, but there are other factors and I’m sure they all made a difference.
trollhattan
@GxB:
Finally watched the full Maher episode last night and was quite puzzled over his Clint take. Basically, he’s comparing Clint and himself as both standup acts and giving hime a “working pro’s” appraisal of the act, not looking at it as a weird piece of political theater.
Managed to watch the last three Maher shows in reverse order and have one comment for his booking agent: stop with the Indian-born arch-conservative assholes. I swear, if Reihan Salam yells at me one more time I’m either putting a vase through the teevee machine or I’m hunting him down and putting a size 11.5 so far up his ass he’ll be tasting Vibram for a week. What an arrogant, shouty little prick.
EconWatcher
@cckids:
Well, you’re leaving out another possibility: Eastwood is just not a consistent or logical thinker. He may be a great artist (I think he is), but that doesn’t mean he’s rational or has decent judgment (beyond the artistic, which is another realm entirely).
ninja3000
Too bad AMC scheduled the Clint Eastwood “festival” about six months ago…
Turgidson
@gnomedad:
Well, yes. And since Obama was never vetted, we can…nay, must…assume that everything bad ever said about Obama must be true. Because Bill Ayers.
Dennis SGMM
@redshirt:
The Republican version would be, “Thanks to the genius of the corporations TURNIP HARVEST AT ALL TIME HIGHS! Instructions on making turnip vodka, as well as this weeks’ networked distractions below.”
Cassidy
This isn’t just the celebrity thing; every Republican/ Conservative fancies themself an action hero.
cckids
@GxB: I think Maher’s problem was he was conflating how difficult stand-up comedy is with, you know, a real audience who paid for their tickets & expect entertainment; and what Eastwood was doing: throwing raw meat to a pack of rabid dogs. As so many have said, he didn’t have to be coherent, he just had to smear & slam President Obama. The more disrespect, the better.
Maher was mixing up the RNC with reality.
Frankensteinbeck
@EconWatcher:
This. Consistent and rational behavior is the exception in humanity, not the rule.
Cassidy
@cckids: In Maher’s defense, he’s always hesitant to go after his own (Hollywood). That’s not much of defense, but he’ll find a way to defend a Hollywood personality more often than not, regardless of the politics.
cckids
@EconWatcher: True, it is easy to start believing an actor’s image is reality, but Eastwood has also directed some excellent work. I can’t see someone who can’t think logically being successful at the type of movies he’s made. They aren’t exactly the throw bombs & rain bullets mindless crap that doesn’t take much thought.
cckids
@El Cruzado:
cckids
Ok, wtf WP? FY indeed.
artem1s
When I first heard about the chair thing it occurred to me that the GOP thought they would be getting some kick ass response to the Detroit comeback ad. Not sure how much Clint was cognizant of that though.
Considering he is such a fan of jazz, I wondered if he thought he could pull off some awesome performance piece cum solo break ala The Bird.
Not that the actual thing resembled art or music at all. Just saying, I’ve seen many an audience at a performance festival walk away shaking their heads in confusion from a trainwreck while the ‘hip crowd’ (art school buddies) crowed about how wonderful and ground breaking it was.
Maybe he was giving the GOP another reason to hate the NEA.
Cassidy
@artem1s: I feel this way about anything that begins with interpetive dance.
Violet
@GxB: Unless Clint explains what he was doing up there at the convention, we’re all just left speculating. Was it real? Was it performance art? Was he trolling? Is he a doddering fool? Etc.
My impression of Maher’s take was that he just looked at it as a guy standing up in front of a crowd. And Clint Eastwood killed it, in that simple assessment. They cheered. They laughed. The shouted out requests for the old favorites. They loved him. He knew it, went long, and gave the crowd what they wanted. In that simple take, Bill is right–Clint killed it.
Now, looking at as more than just a room and a guy up in front of the crowd, there’s more to it. It was a serious political convention, was it appropriate? What did Clint mean? Why wasn’t his speech approved? Etc., etc., the whole thing is crazy. There is much to hash over and assess. But as a piece of pure performance, Bill is right–Clint killed it up there.
GxB
@trollhattan: Having watched Mahrer for several years now, his defense of Hollywood is on it’s own a bit tribal. Note the tiff with Jason Alexander during that bit, both appealing to yet another mega-star Seinfeld. That and his occasional foray into the world of libtard-lefty woo – grrrr, he undoes a whole bunch of good he’s done.
Ah yes, and his guest selection, I understand why he doesn’t want the show to get a reputation as a lefty enclave, but he seems to go out of his way to accommodate our special needs republicans. And his show is virtually unwatchable for the 45 minutes between the monologue and new rules because of it.
PurpleGirl
@trollhattan: Not completely moderate. He also went after unions: nurses, teachers, corrections officers and other special interests. The teapartiers would love that aspect of his policies.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
I still am not convinced that Eastwood wasn’t mocking them with the empty chair. Everything I’ve read about him says he’s a moderate Republican and “ranting crazy old man” sums up his opinion of the GOP right now. He certainly did a two for one there; make the GOP look nuts to their face and increase his popularity with the Right.
LanceThruster
Btw, if I hadn’t watched Maddow the other evening, I would not have known that Mittens told the press corps to stand down, only to call them back 90 minutes later to assemble for a special event (i.e. him taking his boat out on the lake).
He sure looked manly and executive-ish (other than the bumbling that preceded his manly outing).
Applejinx
@cckids:
Intentional sabotage, executed with nerves of steel and damn fine acting. Which HAS been his day job for how many years?
The super bowl ad: legit. Supporting gay marriage: legit. Voting for Gray Davis: legit. Making a film showing the Japanese side of Iwo Jima sympathetically: legit. Making a film exploring J. Edgar Hoover as a closeted gay nutjob: legit. Believes global warming is a serious problem: legit.
“I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21, because he promised to get us out of the Korean War,” Eastwood said. “And over the years, I realized there was a Republican philosophy that I liked. And then they lost it.”
Legit.
‘Endorsing Romney’?
YOU HAVE BEEN TROLLED.
LanceThruster
@Cassidy:
He also swooned over Bibi Netanyahu. He knows which side his bread is buttered on (as does Arianna).
I like much of his clobbering of those openly contemptuous of the public (though at the same time he acknowledges that the lies work), but I feel that’s how those promoting the official 9/11 narrative are.
trollhattan
@GxB:
He plays a lot of catch-and-release with the Republicans, and I can’t always tell when it’s part of his schtick and when it’s a hole in his knowledge (am guessing a Venn diagram would show overlapping circles). There was one telling moment (can’t recall which episode) when he literally banged his head on the desk after noting “I can’t have a discussion with you when you live in an alternate reality.”
I already know Republicans Make Shit Up. Weekly reminders aren’t really helpful.
Randy P
@Violet: Now you’ve got me thinking of Andy Kaufman, who would sometimes come onstage with this persona of a really bad comedian and just be not funny for x minutes. And that was it. His whole set.
But I always detested Andy Kaufman. I understand some people think he was a god, but all I got out of him was “not funny”. Ever. With any of his schticks.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
Which is sad, because Eastwood’s ten times the actor of all of them put together, not to mention his directing. Million Dollar Baby is a subtle moving film about striving and the end of life, and Gran Torino was a great film about angry white guys making their peace with a multicultural reality. Seeing him make a fool of himself is a disappointment.
trollhattan
@PurpleGirl:
Definitely agree Arnold was a mixed bag and a disaster in some arenas. It was still startling how quickly the wingers divorced him when he didn’t start his governorship by shooting the joint up and stealing Pelosi’s lunch money.
They had projected him into a deadlier version of St. Ronaldus.
Applejinx
@Herbal Infusion Bagger: Um… Gran Torino is a film about an angry white guy making his peace with a multicultural reality and then going alone into the den of the complete bastards, telling nobody of his plan, drawing their fire through old-man hectoring, and sacrificing himself for the sake of the guy that he wants to remain above the fray.
Is that or is that not an accurate summary of what’s in that movie, by far his most successful recent film that he directed, produced, and starred in?
Joel
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Gary Sinise, too. Supposedly, Robert Downey Jr.
One of these is not like the others…
The Other Chuck
@PurpleGirl:
If there’s one union I would love to see busted, broken, dissolved, and ground into the dust, it’s the fucking Prison Guards Union. If the Gubenator went after them, I can only see that as a plus.
The Moar You Know
@Ann Rynd: Jeff Bridges has a longstanding substance abuse problem (white powder) that so far as I can tell has never been stopped or addressed in any way.
My point is, at least he has a reason for acting like a lunatic, unlike Eastwood.
MattR
@trollhattan:
Agreed. There are times, like this past week, that he leaves things in a way that make it fairly apparent that the Republican is full of shit, but there are also too many times where he drops the subject in a way that leaves the viewer with the impression that both sides have some merit and that “reasonable people might disagree”
I believe that was this week when Ron Christie was insisting that the $716 billion in Medicare cuts was going to decrease benefits, rather than reduce the rate of increase paid to providers. He said something like ‘We can’t debate ideas when we can’t even agree on the facts”. I think he came back to that line later in the show when climate change came up.
The Other Chuck
@GxB: I really would like to see Jason Alexander back on the show, because he’s actually quite well-spoken and intelligent … but they also need to book Julia Louis-Dreyfuss, and have her reprise her Elaine role by ripping that ridiculous toupee off Alexander’s head, while shouting at him “YOU’RE BALD!”
GxB
@cckids: This. I Fully concur.
@Cassidy: This. I Fully concur.
@Violet: This. I – uh, I get what you’re saying, but it was a shooting fish in a barrel situation. What sailor is going to not tip his first lap dancer after six months at sea?
@Applejinx: Okay, I can entertain this as a possibility, but like DougJ’s post immediately below, what good is trolling when it’s open to interpretation even to those who should be “in the know?” I’m voting for a bit of doddering old (legendary) fool along with extenuating circumstances.
@trollhattan: Sounds like a response to Ron Christie just this past week. (eta MattR got this)
patrick II
@Joel:
Robert Downey Jr. became more favorable towards hardcore law and order after he was finally thrown in jail after his umpteenth drug arrest and that hard reality and cold withdrawal finally straightened him out.
I’m not sure how far right he has drifted on other matters.
cckids
@Applejinx: Hey, Eastwood is the one whose name is out there endorsing Romney. If he is trolling the GOP, he has given them his name, identity & image to use as they will. It gives moderate Repubs a shoulder to lean on – “see, Clint is one of us still”. Not sure who’s being trolled here.
patrick II
@Joel:
Robert Downey Jr. became more favorable towards hardcore law and order after he was finally thrown in jail after his umpteenth drug arrest and that hard reality and cold withdrawal finally straightened him out.
I’m not sure how far right he has drifted on other matters.
gelfling545
@Villago Delenda Est: Yet he is also the one who was clever enough prenatally to fake his own birth in the US and to design a plot to end gun ownership by diabolically doing nothing at all about gun control.
cckids
@Applejinx: Hey, Eastwood is the one whose name is out there endorsing Romney. If he is trolling the GOP, he has given them his name, identity & image to use as they will. It gives moderate Repubs a shoulder to lean on – “see, Clint is one of us still”. Not sure who’s being trolled here.
My spouse has many wealthy clients & acquaintances who can’t stand the rabid, frothing base of the GOP, yet want to vote their pocketbooks for Romney. They are using all the things you listed about Clint, tying that list to his endorsement of Robo-Rom & running with it. Not that it changed any votes, but it did make some of them more firm in their resolve to vote.
Cassidy
@Applejinx: Dude, I like Eastwood’s movies as well, but I think you’re getting a little too far into it.
The Moar You Know
@The Other Chuck: I agree. Sadly, he did not go after the corrections people. He went on a motherfucking jihad against the teacher’s union, but then again every GOPer in California does.
The good part is that every single proposition the California GOP placed on the 2006 ballot lost. EVERY SINGLE ONE. You will notice at that point he stopped being an asshole and started governing like a reasonable human being – i.e. told the GOP to fuck off and started cutting deals with the Dems to keep the state running.
Cassidy
@patrick II: RDJ also showed up as surprise when a bunch of kids were having an Iron Man constume contest at SDCC. He also signed autographs; I’m not sure how long, but I seem to recall it being for all of them, but I could have easily misheard. Is that something a RWinger does?
GxB
@The Other Chuck: Did you see the appeal Jason made that was highlighted on GoS after the Aurora shooting? He really shines, and seems to be willing to put his name out there to take a stand. It’s what were going to need to get any hard hitting social change these days – politicians all know how hot that third rail is.
And the “rug”, I think it’s actually plugs.
Gah, and a large reply to several comments is in WP purgatory. Shakes fist at cloud.
Joel
@Dennis SGMM: It Could Happen Here is my favorite relevant-to-America dystopian book.
Joel
@Dennis SGMM: It Could Happen Here is my favorite relevant-to-America dystopian book.
Applejinx
@cckids: So you admit that, like in Gran Torino, there is a self-sacrifice involved?
He’s given them the image of a doddering old man who can’t finish sentences, yelling at a chair, and seemingly every single thing he’s accusing Obama of publically is actually the fault of the Republicans, from Bush getting us into Afghanistan to Romney being a Harvard lawyer to Cheney saying go fuck yourself.
They can certainly try to use that as they will.
I saw it, and it did not seem like a coherent performance.
You might even say it was a brilliant, career-best portrayal- the living image of the sort of geriatric, senile hateful resentful old fart who’s a turnoff to ‘undecideds’. Did him not finishing sentences and hunching over and quavering, really look powerful to you?
Do you think he directs movies sounding like that? Have the interviews he’s given where he snarls at those opposing gay marriage, at those disbelieving global warming, sounded like that?
Exactly how effective do the Republicans look when an enemy has bought his way into a key speech closing their convention, mocked them and made them look like fools, done whatever he wanted with them, and run overtime forcing the supposed next President of the United States to rush his keynote speech?
All he has to do is OWN it, and say ‘I bought that opportunity for $xx,000, and ruined their convention, because I oppose all these things. Do you want a President that can be so easily bought- or outwitted by an old libertarian movie star?’ I’m thinking ‘stay home in disgust waiting for 2016’ is not an unpredictable response by some of the base, to such a debacle.
And I think that is just as planned- by a certain ‘libertarian hero’ who seems to have put his money where his mouth is (not like he hasn’t got enough of both, at this point).
Joel
@Applejinx: Gran Torino is also one of the worst movies I have seen in recent history (the Blind Side competes, but ultimately falls short).
The tropes are so heavy handed and obvious, it hurts to watch them. It reminds me of those old “Life Stories: Families in Crisis” TV movies that HBO used to show with actors before they became famous (Ben Affleck as steroid abuser! Calista Flockhart as bulimic!)
cckids
@Applejinx: Maybe so, and for his sake I guess I hope so. But Occam’s Razor & all that, your scenario is seriously complicated & hard to pull off.
But, eons ago, I dated an actor for several years, and the way so many of them adopt the persona of the character they are playing, while they are playing it, is kind of weird.
You do realize the whole Gran Torino guy was a character?
ericblair
@Randy P:
Meta gets really tired after a while. So does deliberately annoying your audience, like Andy Warhol’s intentionally boring stuff. If I want to get bored or pissed off I have plenty of opportunity to do that on a daily basis without their help.
I still can’t buy the Eastwood Ratfuck Theory. Sounds like he tried to wing it and flopped. Extemporaneous speaking and improv is way, way harder than people think: you really do have to prepare, and prepare well, but in a different way than a “prepared” performance. Lots of examples of experts who spend twenty years working in an area, figure they can pop up on a stage and wing it for twenty minutes, and get tongue-tied a minute in because they have no idea how to structure what they’re talking about. I don’t think Eastwood has a background in improv, so made the big rookie mistake.
I remember in music school there were three senior courses in Jazz Improv. Only exam I can think of where they expect you to wing it, but that doesn’t make it easy.
catclub
@cckids: “yet want to vote their pocketbooks for Romney.”
gone is the understanding that the economy does much better under democratic presidents.
Gone is the understanding that the stock market is up 60% or more from its low in march 2009, by these rich people who usually watch the stock market.
cckids
@catclub: Yep. Their taxes will go down. All they care about.
Several of them live in New Jersey & Conn. & like to bitch about the total percentage of their income that goes to taxes. And it is considerable, with state & local + property taxes thrown in.
Give them facts & figures about how a better economy would lead to more money for them & everyone? They can’t/don’t want to see it. Very limited vision. They are the exemplars of the IGMFY squad leading the GOP.
Villago Delenda Est
@gelfling545:
They’ve got “doublethink” down pat. Inner Party mastery of the concept.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
I think you’re reading too much into it. I think Eastwood was pissed off at Obama, accepted the invitation, thought he’d wing it, and flopped. Even a great artist can screw up.
Lukeness
Eastwood appeared at the convention for the same reason that AMC is running old Eastwood movies: to promote his new film that will be in theaters in a couple of weeks. This is exactly what happens all the time. Stars suddenly appear in unexpected places and get talked about a bunch in various media where they might not usually be talked about (in this case, political media) and then we start seeing ads for their new movies. I think Eastwood’s agent played the GOP to get him this appearance.
Brachiator
This is beyond stupid.
Applejinx
@Herbal Infusion Bagger:
Why would he be pissed off at Obama when all the things he’s been vocally and publically pissed off about, in all his recent interviews, put him starkly on the opposite side from today’s Republican Party?
priscianusjr
@Dennis SGMM: @Dennis SGMM: