Clint and the GOP
Poor Clint Eastwood. Like most film actors, the man is a fool, and like most entertainment celebrities, he has no idea how foolish he is. I suppose few of us could resist the temptation to believe the praise that is lavished on our every grunt or belch, and it is no reflection, personally, on Mr. Eastwood to say, as one journalist did, that he has an ego as big as the state of Florida.
By now, poor Clint probably thinks he wrote the lines he is celebrated for delivering, and he may even think that his experience as an actor is just the background for someone who wants to address the Republican National Convention. After all, he has spent his entire career reading scripts he did not write, pretending to feelings he does not have, saying things he does not believe. What better preparation could there be for a political career?
Eastwood, apparently, never studied logic. While all politicians may be actors, all actors are not necessarily politicians. To succeed as politicians, aspiring Napoleons need more than duplicity and hypocrisy. (The word hypocrite, by the way, is simply Greek for actor.) They need drive, single-minded ruthlessness, and an egomaniacal indifference to the happiness and welfare of everyone else. These precious gifts are not given to everyone. Actors may think they are as nasty and self-centered as anyone in the Congress, but they deceive themselves. They are too prone to confusion. Presented with several options--wealth, fame, sex, cocaine--they are likely to say, "Give me all of them." When politicians (like so-and-so and what's his name) try this, the results are fatal to their career.
Out of deference to British libel law, I have refrained from filling in the blanks. A week or so ago, I made the mistake of writing a column for a publication in which I ridiculed Eastwood's endorsement of Romney. I mentioned some publicly documented scandals in his personal life and referred, mockingly, to the two films he made starring opposite an orangutan.
The legal experts demurred, perhaps correctly, though I still don't know what the problem with the orangutan was. My point, silly and trivial though it be, was simply this: Actors are silly people who pretend to be real human beings. Mitt Romney was unwise to rejoice in the endorsement of such a chaotic egomaniac, and he looked utterly foolish by responding, "He really made my day." If the Republicans had bothered to ask me, I would have strongly advised them either not to let Clint address their convention or else to write his script for him.
No one asked me, and Eastwood's performance was amateur night at a smalltown comedy club. Addressing an empty chair and doing the worst Bob Neuhart imitation I have ever seen (Neuhart has jokingly threatened to sue), Dirty Harry delivered such gems as:
"So, Mr. President, how do you handle promises that you have made when you were running for election, and how do you handle them?
"I mean, what do you say to people? Do you just -- you know -- I know -- people were wondering -- you don’t -- handle that OK. Well, I know even people in your own party were very disappointed when you didn’t close Gitmo. And I thought, well closing Gitmo -- why close that, we spent so much money on it. But, I thought maybe as an excuse -- what do you mean shut up?"
and
"We don’t have to be -- what I’m saying, we do not have to be metal (ph) masochists and vote for somebody that we don’t really even want in office just because they seem to be nice guys or maybe not so nice guys, if you look at some of the recent ads going out there, I don’t know."
Ageists have been unkind enough to suggest that Eastwood is senile. That is unfair to old people and to Alzheimer's patients. I have known many people who survived with wits intact into their 90's, and I have several friends who, as they grew older, had serious lapses in memory and concentration, but nothing like this. Some intelligent people do fall into incoherence, but they are not generally allowed to address political conventions.
The basic problem is not one of age or illness but of vocation. Eastwood is an actor, a do-nothing who played cowboys and cops on television and in film. He was not even a good actor. So long as Don Siegel hired a good writer, Clint did just fine. With a good crew of writers, camermen, directors, and producers he could even make movies on his own in much the same way that Barack Obama governs the United States. But, like Obama, Eastwood cannot work without a script wriitten by someone else.
If the delegates were offended or ashamed, they did not show it. Eastwood was given a tumultuous welcome, and the crowd chanted, along with the star, his signature phrase, "Make My Day." Even a poor actor on a bad day is a celebrity, and in America, it is better to be a poor actor than a "stellar businessman"--Eastwood's description of Romney.
If conservatives wish to know why elections no longer matter, they need only watch or even read Eastwood's speech. If only Clyde the orangutan had been on hand, he might have saved the day.
PS This piece has been legalled as defamatory to Eastwood.
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Tom Fleming has hit a revealing nerve here about how far our leaders have come to depend upon fools. . Mr. Fleming alos knows something about human virtue and vice like the poet who at least knew the proper place for different types --- even the fool and the actor.
Lear.
What hast thou been?
Edgar.
A servingman, proud in heart and mind; that curl'd my hair,
wore gloves in my cap; serv'd the lust of my mistress' heart and
did the act of darkness with her; swore as many oaths as I spake
words, and broke them in the sweet face of heaven; one that
slept in the contriving of lust, and wak'd to do it. Wine lov'd
I deeply, dice dearly; and in woman out-paramour'd the Turk.
False of heart, light of ear, bloody of hand; hog in sloth, fox
in stealth, wolf in greediness, dog in madness, lion in prey.
Let not the creaking of shoes nor the rustling of silks betray
thy poor heart to woman. Keep thy foot out of brothel, thy hand 1890
out of placket, thy pen from lender's book, and defy the foul
fiend. Still through the hawthorn blows the cold wind; says
suum, mun, hey, no, nonny. Dolphin my boy, my boy, sessa! let
him trot by. The fool was always an actor.
My goodness, Dr. Fleming, the staff at the Daily Mail appears to have some awfully thin skin. You must be setting some sort of record for flagged articles.
I didnt watch the convention, nor will I ever watch a future one, so I really cannot say anything about Eastwood's performance there. But is it fair to characterize him as a not even a good actor? Perhaps you meant to say writer?
The real problem isnt with Eastwood himself, talented as he is in his professional life and disgusting as he is in his private life, but with the idea that any serious movement should look to what any celebrity be it actor, musician, comedian, etc thinks.
Side thought - you have to wonder if it is really worth your time to contribute to the Daily Mail if they are going to flag half of what you write. Their idea of 'right wing' seems quite milquetoast.
I liked Clint Eastwood as performer from his earliest days as Rowdy Yates on Raw Hide. His films with Don Siegel were wonderful, and I have even liked several of the films he directed. But actor? Not a bit. He makes John Wayne seem like Olivier. His voice is soft and uncontrolled. His facial repertoire is wooden. He's best at playing people as dumb as he is. I understand the distinction between classically trained stage actors (e.g. Rallph Richardson) and powerful film presences (Brando, Pacino), but by any standards I can imagine, Clint can't deliver a line. Some directors like Siegel could get the maximum out of him, as Ford and Hawks got it out Wayne, but compared even with a Burt Reynolds or Bruce Willis, he can't--for all his efforts that are so visible on the screen--act.
This legalling business is getting ridiculous. The sticking points were 1) my assertion that in his movies Eastwood reads lines he has not written--a fact not in dispute and 2) this passage:
"Actors may think they are as nasty and self-centered as anyone in the Congress, but they deceive themselves. They are too prone to confusion. Presented with several options--wealth, fame, sex, cocaine--they are likely to say, "Give me all of them." When politicians (like so-and-so and what's his name) try this, the results are fatal to their career."
was supposed to suggest that I was accusing Clint of using cocaine. Figuratevi!
But political campaigns these days are all about celebrity and nothing but celebrity. From that point of view, which is the only point of view Republicans are capable of, Romney scored a big hit.
I saw this on the Wall Street Journal by a "conservative" political commentator. Reading Dr. Fleming's lucid (although, by U.K. standards, scandalous) writings can lead one to forget how truly lost the Republican party is.
"Clint Eastwood was funny, endearing—'Oprah was crying'—and carries his own kind of cultural authority. 'It's time for somebody else to come along and solve the problem.' He was free-form, interesting—you didn't quite know what was going to come next—strange and, in the end, kind of exhilarating. Talk about icons. The crowd yelling, 'Make my day,' was one of the great convention moments, ever."
So the crowd chanting a one-liner like they were at a Pro-Wrasslin' match makes for the best convention moment ever? It's too bad Mitt didn't come out to blaring theme music, rip off his shirt, and yell into the mic "Can you Smeeeeeeell what the Romney is cooking?!" Actually, I would pay good money to see a tag team match between Romney/Ryan and Obama/Biden (although we all know it would end with Pelosi running in with a steel chair to Romney's magnificently coifed head).
I have never attended a national convention of any political party; I have watched on television only two: the 1956 Republican Convention because I had the measles and had to stay with my grandmother who was the only one in the family, the entire extended family, who had a television, a television which got one channel which carried the convention into my grandmother's living room in which I was held captive on the couch by the measles; and the 1968 Democratic Convention because it was good entertainment which got your blood up.
I did not watch this year's Republican convention; however, I did see excepts of Mr. Eastwood's "speech" on Internet video. I am in full agreement with the critiques on this forum; however, I did wonder if Mr. Eastwood was just actor enough with enough cunning to be throwing a punch at Romney in his criticism of Obama because Obama had not kept his promise to end the wars in the Middle East, wars which Mr. Romney is already mongering new and anew. Even if Mr. Eastwood did not intend it as such, I wonder if at least some in the Romney campaign felt a bit uneasy. Perhaps not, knowing that the Pavlovian-trained rubes would miss such a subtlety, intended or otherwise.
Omberto, I see you are one of us. I also am in agreement with all that has been said. Was it not a hoot... those benighted rubes providing us with entertainment? Ancient blood, past chivalry, these lift us up, in that is pride, with rubes like that we share no common mother of humanity.
Oderisi
Mr.Schulz,
Omberto and Oderisi, proud penitents of Purgatory. Your irony was not missed!
Mr peters: I have very much enjoyed all your comments. They are lovingly crafted, devoid of sophomoric hyperbole and sweeping generalizations, and display a style I regretfully lack. Pray my grand-daughters are influenced by teachers like you.
All one can say is when the most memorable moment of a party's convention is an aged actor and his empty chair, then it isn't much of a party.
Since the whole system is a farce anyway, what wicked fun it would have been had Clyde the Orangutan been sitting in "Obama's" chair! Of course, the RNC wouldn't DARE try to get away with THAT. On the other hand, Romney will probably lose anyway since Big Media has already stacked the deck against him, so why not have some fun in the meantime? If nothing else, it would have been a chance to see the increasingly bizarre Motormouth Mathews fall over the edge and into the nearest hospital for "observation".