Good, Bad, and Ugly

How about that Republican National Convention?

That sure was something wasn’t it?

Who would have guessed Obama could control hurricanes? I mean I knew he had a mean hook shot, but hurricanes? He must have used his Magic Negro Ray, or maybe it was HAARP. 

I particularly enjoyed the part where Anne Romney explained how Mitt is just a regular guy and how they lived on Top Ramen and rotten cabbages that they scavenged from dumpsters behind the IGA. 

I enjoyed Paul Ryan story time. Seriously, who doesn’t like a tall tale or two? Or six?  I admit I was a wee bit disappointed he didn’t make a pit bull and lipstick joke though.

I thought it was darned nice of the Republican National Committee to be so honest and upfront about how the rest of us will be treated once Republicans retake the reins of power – i.e. the part where they changed the rules to declare the Ron Paul delegates null and void.  Nothing tells you more about how your dissenting views will be regarded under a Romney Administration than that little maneuver.  That’s the GOP version of democracy folks, if we don’t like how you vote, you just don’t get a vote.  Now, sit down and shut up or we’ll have your ass waterboarded.

We finally got a look at the new Republican Party platform, 1) Hate Gays. 2) Hate Abortion. 3) Hate Gays. 5) Subjugate Women 5) Hate Gays. 6) Love Jesus. 7) Hate Gays. 8) Guns! 9) Also, Hate Us Some Gays.

And the best part? Clint Eastwood.

Wow.

Just … wow.

I don’t think I’ve seen anything that cringe inducing since the San Diego Padres invited Rosanne Barr to caterwaul her way through the Star Spangled Banner back in 1990.

Surprise guest - that’s what Clint was billed as, the Republican National Convention surprise guest. 

He sure was that, all right.

The sea of fixed smiles and frozen surprise as the camera panned over the audience said it all.

Now look, let’s not get off on the wrong foot here, Clint Eastwood is an American Icon. There’s no doubt about that. 

Clint Eastwood is a lousy singer, a decent musician, a fine actor, a better writer, and a fantastic director. The guy has made terrific movies for fifty years on both sides of the camera. All those spaghetti westerns, The Outlaw Jose Wales, Kelly’s Heroes, Unforgiven. Grand Torino. Even the ones with the orangutan, those were pretty funny. And sure, he’s made some real stinkers, there was Space Cowboys, and that one about the the Russian super fighter plane that could read minds or some such nonsense, and City Heat. And there was the whole Yoko Ono Sondra Locke period starting with that astounding piece of shit, The Gauntlet (Seriously, that pasty wan walleyed woman must be really, really good in the sack. I’m just saying).

Still, I love the man’s work, I do.

But Improv?

Yeah. Not so much.

 

At least that’s what I thought at first. 

 

In the aftermath of Hurricane Eastwood, everybody from Rachel Maddow to every media outlet, pundit and talking head, to Barak Obama himself is shaking their collectives heads in puzzlement.

Even Eastwood’s friend, broadcaster Tom Brokaw, wondered what the hell was going on as Clint wandered off script.  Brokaw quipped that Eastwood had made a career out of being a man of few words, but in his introduction of Mitt Romney, Brokaw tweeted that "As a surprise guest on the Tampa stage he [Eastwood] had too many words (I say as a friend)."

Even Fox News questioned Eastwood’s sanity and the sanity of the people who put him up to it (at least at first, until Fox found themselves on the same side of the fence with rest of the mainstream “liberal” media, and which point they reversed gears and proclaimed Eastwood’s act the single most hilarious bit of impromptu comedy ever performed, but I digress).

Could be they’re all wrong.

The more I look at it, the more Eastwood’s bizarre rambling interview with an empty chair appears to one of his best performances ever.

Could be Clint Eastwood was having one over on the GOP.

No really, think about it.

On the surface it appears to be a sad and poignant example of the disintegration of a once great institution.

But as a parody of the Republican Party itself, of the disintegration of a once great institution, Eastwood’s act was just plain brilliant – even if that’s not what he intended.

Crazy rambling old Blue Hair chasing phantoms only he can see? Good gravy! It’s John McCain!

Hell, Eastwood could have been a stand-in for Mitt Romney. Remember the “Half Time in America?” commercial? Clint Eastwood did a commercial during the Super Bowl last year where he talked about how Detroit, and the auto industry it’s famous for, is making a come back.  Eastwood didn’t exactly say so, but the implication was that Bush and Obama sponsored industry bailouts were responsible.

Predictably, conservatives went apeshit  – declaring Clint Eastwood a big government shill.  

And today? Today he’s back in the fold, the GOP’s golden boy.

Just like Mitt. Flip flop, flip flog.

What Eastwood intended with his act is pretty obvious – Ha ha, Obama is an empty suit, an empty chair, ha ha, get it? Isn’t that funny? Obama’s not real, he’s not an American, ha ha, see? Let’s dress him up and put some words in his mouth and make him caper around around like one of them old timey minstrel shows where the white guy is painted up in blackface and singing in a funny version of Southern Negro.  And then we’ll attack that. Ha ha, clever, right? 

Isn’t that exactly what the GOP has been doing for last four years?

Isn’t that exactly what Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich and Michele Bachman and Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and Sarah Palin and the Birthers and the Truthers and the conspiracy theorists and the Evangelicals and Fox News and all the regular old bigots on the street have been doing for the last four years?  Well, isn’t it?

Sure.

Conservatives haven’t been attacking Barack Obama for the last four years, they’ve been screaming at a fantasy, a strawman of their own creation. 

Conservatives haven’t been attacking the actual president, instead they’ve been losing their minds over a supposed Muslim Communist Nazi Socialist Kenyan who wants to give everybody “free” healthcare by destroying capitalism through death panels convened by the New World Order of leftist radicals secretly controlled by Bill Ayers and the Black Panthers through the Federal Reserve and a program of forced vaccinations which causes young girls to become whores and which in turn forces young men to become crazed mass killers which is, of course, a false flag operation by the Obama Administration to usher in the United Nations who will confiscate our guns and herd us all into FEMA Death Camps of Death where everybody will be forced into an unending string of gay marriages and drone launched abortions in order to destroy the free market, give everybody free birth control, and bring about the End Times. Also, Nazis.

Clint Eastwood’s act at the RNC was a brilliant analogy for the republican party itself.

Seriously.

Folks, nothing, and I mean nothing, sums up the current state of the once great party of Lincoln like a raving old white guy yelling at an empty chair while everybody in the audience uncomfortably tries to pretend like nothing’s wrong.

If he could have worked in an orangutan, it would have been perfect.