The Way We Were
I recently watched The Candidate, one of the smartest films about politics ever to come out of Hollywood. The plot has Robert Redford as Bill McKay, a politician's son who enters a race to become Senator. As he gets closer to winning, he also starts selling out the original ideas, and idealism, that got him in the race.
Released in 1972, it's always interesting to watch again to see both how similar and how different it is from today's politics. But even I was surprised this time around--when McKay debates his opponent, what's the big issue? An oil spill.
PS Speaking of movies and politics, both Kevin Costner and James Cameron have claimed they know how to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf. Maybe they do. I just hope they're not confusing their films with real life.
PPS I've noticed that ever since the spill David Letterman has been mocking Obama. I'm surprised there hasn't been great comment among the punditocracy. Isn't that supposed to be a turning point?
posted by LAGuy @ 12:06 AM
4 Comments:
If I've lost Letterman, I've lost the nation.
These days, the pundits' favorite topic is themselves. I have seen many, many articles on "The media have turned on Obama".
In the conservative media, the story is "The mainstream/liberal media has turned on Obama". And those mainstream outlets who continue to pretend that the MSM is unbiased writes the story as "Liberal commentators and MSNBC have turned on Obama". But it's all the same thing.
Why write about David Letterman when you can write about yourself?
"food for the foodless" is all I remember from the Candidate
That's actually a good moment, where Redford is being driven batty by the inanities he's required to say, and starts mocking them. It's a very cynical film, to say the least, but whenver I listen to a politician, I can hear the same sort of empty rhetoric.
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