 
Ok, the guy I picked that up from had this to say, in comments at the Atlantic, where I've become a much "liked" commenter, cough.
This was Clint Eastwood's subversive, avant-garde performance. It will be studied for years by young actors, aspirants for gigs such as the Daily Show.
Look at the transcript, he talks about Romney and Ryan not as the future Presidents of the United States, but as two guys who can "come along." Then, immediately, he states that lawyers shouldn't become President of the United States. (Both Romney and Obama are lawyers) I mean, Clint couldn't be clearer.
It was awesome.
Which drew the response
I think you are on to something. Clint is still making movies! He can be coherent, for god's sake! I think he either just didn't care or else you are right. But he's never been deeply involved in national politics, even as a moderate Republican, so he might be leveling the playing field because everyone thought his NFL commercial was for Obama Administration. Whatever! (that's what he was thinking, too) To which the first guy responded
You're right. We can't be sure whether he just doesn't give a sh*t or whether the whole thing was self-scripted as him playing himself playing a doddering old geezer.
But he's Clint Eastwood, so he gets the benefit of the doubt. The political reporting class? Their scorn for Clint's defiance of Conventions means little.
At which point I chirped in with "Clint Eastwood, postmodernist?"
I think they were somewhat overestimating Eastwood's neutrality here. Romney has a law degree, but from an MBA/JD joint program, and he never practiced, so that line is stretching it. But Eastwood's last movie was Gran Torino, where he played off the angry old white guy thing in an interesting way. Walt Kowalski didn't seem the teabagger type.
Anyway, from a cursory check of the other side here on SI and off in the bloviating punditsphere, the right seems as .. enchanted? energized? intrigued? by Clint's performance as we are. Though they certainly didn't find it puzzling or weird, but they're not much into nuances on the right. The early news accounts had Romney's staff seemingly stumbling all over the place disavowing responsibility, and I still don't see how it benefits Romney to have everybody talking about Eastwood instead of him. And then there's the new "eastwooding" meme.
I think the "he just doesn't give a shit" line is the most probable, and if you read the transcript it seems pretty mean spirited and not particularly deep. Still, it's all more entertaining than slogging through the post-truth analysis of all the other crap that went down at the RNC. I hope Obama can come up with a response with a little wit in it, anyway.
Now I have to go watch the Daily Show from last night, I think it's supposed to be good. See if Jon thought it was subversive and avant-garde, though I'm thinking he wouldn't say. |
