Creepy Clint Made Our Day

By Michael Moore, The Daily Beast, August 31

 A not-so-short introduction  to this Micheal Moore piece from Niagara At Large publisher Doug Draper.

Don’t know how many of you on either side of the Niagara River border tuned in to the final hours of Republican National Convention this August 30, but if you did you might have witnessed an 82-year-old Clint Eastwood  behaving as if he is in the early stages of dementia, talking to a chair where he imaged U.S. President Barack Obama to be sitting so he could insult him in front millions of television viewers.

Aging actor Clint Eastwood tries talking to U.S. President Barack Obama in an empty chair at Republican National Convention this August 30. What is going on here?

As a long-time fan of Eastwood, going back to his earliest years in film as an avenging cowboy gunfighter through to more recent movie triumps like ‘Unforgiven’ and ‘The Bridges of Madison County’ and other more recent movie triumpths it was shocking to watch what lookcd like a full-blown meltdown. 

What is even more disturbing than this bizarre event is the ‘Alice in Wonderland’ rabbit hole many Americans seem to be following the ‘high plains drifter’ down. And have no illusions or delusions on either side of the Canada/U.S. border. As America slides down that hole, as I am becoming increasingly convinced it is because, let’s face it, many God-fearing, white suburban and working class Americans, who don’t or possibly can’t read a newspaper, want to get this  Black man or ‘negroe” or whatever they call him  s a ‘Muslim’, a European-style socialist who was probably born in Africa or some other foreign country – out of their  White House. As many a frightful ‘Tea Pary’ American screams, ‘we want our country back!’

Many Americans, and that came through loud and clear at the Republican National Convention where Clint Eastwood so sadly made an ass of himself, hate this president, and let’s have no illusions in Canada. We have a prime minister in Canada who can hardly wait for Obama to fall and his neo-con, Tea Party allies in the states to take over so he can shove his Keystone pipe through that country and not have to worry about any more progressive moves on energy, health care and other matters. Let the most vulturistic capitalists reign.

So here is Michael Moore’s piece. Take it in while you can because I am becoming increasingly convinced that the days of critical analysis in the area of news coverage on this continent are numbered. There are fewer and fewer news venues that have the guts to carry material like this and, unfortunately, most of the people who might support them are more interested in hockey and dancing with the stars or whatever other tabloid and reality television shit we are shoveled. 

The footage of Eastwood rambling and mumbling to his “Harvey” – President Obama – will be played to audiences a hundred years from now as the Most Bizarre Convention Moment Ever. The people of the future will know nothing about Dirty Harry or Josey Wales or a Million Dollar Baby. They WILL know about the night a crazy old man hijacked a national party’s most important gathering so he could tell the President to literally go do something to himself (i.e. fuck  himself). In those few moments (and these days, it only takes a few moments – see Anthony Weiner), he completely upended and redefined how he’ll be remembered by younger and future generations.

Academy award winning film documentary producer Michael Moore

A few years ago, at the annual National Board of Review film awards held at Tavern on the Green in New York, I was there to hand out one of the honors. When it came time for Eastwood to accept his, he went up to the microphone and growled to me in front of the audience, “If you ever show up at my house with that camera, I’ll shoot you on sight.” The audience laughed, I laughed, but the person who issued the threat wasn’t laughing. That creeped me out a bit.  I made sure never to go stand on Clint Eastwood’s lawn.

But as I said, the best outcome from the incident last night was that it showed just how out of touch Republicans are these days. It’s as if they want a divorce from us, the American mainstream, so they can go live in the land of legitimate rapes and ice caps that don’t melt. Most Americans don’t live there on Planet Koo-koo, and I don’t suspect many will be visiting there any time soon. 

Thanks, Clint: you made our day 

Michael Moore is an Academy award winning documentary film maker and best-selling author of books that have the nerve to question the United States he loves so much he is worried about. He lives in Michigan and has relatives and friends across the border in Canada – a country he has often pointed to as a beacon for services like health care and more reasonable rules to keep assault weapons out of the hands of anyone who might go on line and order them and so on, although, who knows with the Harper government? We may very well be heading in the U.S. direction. 

This Michael Moore piece was posted on Readers Supported News, one great news site that you can access on line and may wish to support with a donation, since it is one of the last sites like it of its kind. The link for the site and this article are http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/13213-focus-creepy-clint-made-our-day

(Niagara At Large invites you to share your views on this post, remembering that we only post comments by individuals who also have the guts Michael Moore does to share their real first and last name.)