Lance
Sam James
Josh Adams
fooser
jslef
Terry Woods
Ryan
davenate
Mike O
Brian McConnell
bleport
halldg
Reading on Walden Bookstore
Tyler D.
Hugo
Jon
goesdownbitter
jack3566Get the Hook!
One of the great things about this country is that our people rival even Palestinian street mourners and Iraq’s erstwhile Saddam worshipers in their bad acting. Everybody in America, it seems, thinks they’re natural-born Helen Hayeses or Morgan Freemans. “I am not an actor, but I watch one on TV!” And therefore you are one?
Remember when the monstrous Susan Smith went on camera to beg a fictive carjacker for the lives of the sons she’d just drowned for interfering with her sex life? She really thought she could act in the manner of a professional entertainer performing an especially demanding scene. It was immediately apparent, from her utter lack of acting talent or skill, not only that she’d made up the story about the carjacker, but that it was that radical narcissist who had herself murdered the children, counting on her perceived dramatic abilities to cover her misdeeds. Not content to compound her unspeakable crimes with unforgivable acting, she recited her story as though giving a reading from a Klansman’s social script: an N-word did it. And boy, was he big and fierce. Thanks, Susan, that was just what South Carolina needed, the perfect racist Mother from Hell.
Or take the radical narcissism that informs the courtroom performances of O.J. Simpson, who is to the University of Southern California as Susan Smith is to the Low Country. All the world is to this former man a blockbuster star vehicle for himself. As he played a knife-wielding commando in a low-budget picture, so he was one in the only credible performance of his career. As he performed in the company of genuine actors, so he thinks he is one in a Las Vegas courtroom. Who, after all, is going to tell this perfect sociopath that his performances are as believable as Ben Affleck in “Gigli”?
Or, more to the point, as believable as Hillary Clinton choking back tears of remembrance for the slain Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. while reading incompetently from an actual script of silly, self-absorbed sentiments and impossible confabulations about the Hillary at the center of the story of the most formidable gentleman a Clinton never met. Her words could not sustain a dimestore greeting card, and yet here she was, demanding that her audience “suspend disbelief” and pretend with her that she not only can act but can act credibly sincere and grief-stricken on cue, and to imagine with her for a moment that she still stands a chance of getting the nomination. And though Hillary Clinton, like her husband, is not untroubled by errant sociopathy, she is not a delusional person. She surely must know that she can’t act her way out of a paper bag—much less out of a losing campaign. So she cannot be serious about attempting to perform nonsense with verisimilitude in a nation blessed with an embarrassing wealth of gifted and well trained actors. Why, then, the Sarah Heartburn turns?
I believe that Hillary Clinton, like the man she cast as her husband, enters into an implicit compact with her audiences in which it is understood that she will demonstrate through her humiliation that she wants the Presidency so badly that she is willing to abase herself, and thereby flatter us, in order to receive the proceeds of the price of admission, our vote. It is yet one more way in which Hillary and Bill are a double feature on the same ticket. And it’s just one more reason for voters to think again about the desirability of seating in the Oval Office someone who openly boasts of a willingness to do whatever it takes to win. If nothing else, the prospect of four years’ worth of bad acting should give us pause. Except that Ms. Clinton is a bad actor in so many, many ways.
Filed under: Politics | Tagged: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Sociopathy
You haven’t come to the conclusion that most politicians are actually actors??? Haven’t been around long, have you?
You think Barack is not an actor? When he stands there and says he’d have left his church of 20 years if the preacher hadn’t retired? That McCain ‘now understands’ the need to secure the border before handing out citizenship like candy?
I don’t think they’re actors, no. I think that a lot of public figures, including Smith and Simpson, believe they can act, but that very few actually can. Ronald Reagan could act. Karol Wojtyla could act. But I think that in their official capacities they meant every word.
Maybe it’s important to distinguish acting from actual fraudulence. All three presidential candidates are fairly transparent frauds, and I’d hate to see the race go to Obama merely because he is the most convincing fraud. (McCain, whom I cannot stand, has said repeatedly—and even in my august presence!—that he was wrong in his previous approach to illegal immigration; but there are lots of instances of BS with that guy.)
Acting is something else, though. It’s a legitimate craft, and occasionally an art form. To listen to John McCain or Barack Obama speak about education is to listen to someone whose familiarity with education extends no farther than his having had one. These folks pretend to know all kinds of shit they know nothing about, and acting is one of them and, boy, does it show in Hillary. I just don’t think she clueless enough not to know that she doesn’t cut it. I think she’s just going through the motions to be SEEN going through the motions—something no actor would do. When Al Gore goes to New Mexico and opens a speech with “Mi Casa Es Su Casa,” we know what the play is. People enjoy the power to make W.C. Fields kiss their ugly babies to get their votes.
Hillary does it, in part, with her execrable acting. The belly of a snake is not so low that Hillary won’t stoop to it. The People don’t want good politicians who are what they say they are. The People want bad politicians who design and implement bullshit personae and beg on their knees to be liked. As Hillary is the least competent at this twisted process, she’ll be the next to go in the Gong Show.
Is that a stupid way to elect a President, or what?
And unfortunately, Mike, I’ve been around politicians for decades. I’ve seen a few who don’t act at all. Phil Burton. Bill Bradley. George Moscone. Shirley Chisholm. Pat Moynihan. And more recently, Ron Paul. Doesn’t make ‘em good; it’s just to say that they weren’t bad actors, because they didn’t bother trying.
Was just yanking your chain a bit Hugo; I date back to Goldwater, myself and knew Reagan all the way back to the ‘63 GE speaking circuit. Now, that man was a class act!
Also worked with Old Jim Collins here in the Dallas area (the real deal) and Dick Armey (was the real deal until corrupted by DC power). I’m glad to be represented by Sam Johnson locally.
We certainly do have a bunch of second-string bench-warmers running for POTUS this cycle, don’t we?
Sho NUFF, huh? My relatives just about gang-puked when McCain characteristically tried to wrap himself in Goldwater, a friend of the family. McCain’s excuse for this latest show of cross-dressing: that Goldwater was “a conservative maverick”, just like McCain!
Oh, well. At least he got the “maverick” part right. I guess half-truths are about the best we can expect from McCain. I like the real-deal folks, but I gotta admit to enjoying the bigger-than-life brand of Texas pol who’s so full of BS they have to follow him with a fire extinguisher in case he spontaneously combusts like the Ft. Worth stockyards sometimes do. There is such a thing as a good rascal, in my book. But I’m glad you have Sam Johnson. (And I think Gramm will be in the McCain cabinet.)
We’re fresh out of Georgia politicians who’re worth a damn, though Newt does live in my neighborhood when he’s not off flogging his latest. Nice thing about him is that he perceives the structures of governance and of governmental service delivery—the macro-view. (That vantage is one of the compensations of being even a third-rate historian.) On the other hand I pass the late Lester Maddox’s abandoned house en route to Wal-Mart to get my gubmint-subsidized Rx compliments of a Texan who, like McCain, can’t call himself a conservative without a modifier.
…or rather, as the Stockyards sometimes DID used to combust, when I played in them as a kid, long before you couldn’t play in them at all without a credit card.
As San Antone gave unto us chili, I’ve sometimes wondered whether the combustible Ft. Worth yards did not revealeth unto us the fajita.
I came to Texas for college; was raised in Kansas. My family worked the first senatorial bid of a young fellow named Bob Dole, back before he became a Viagra pitch man
To this day, I wish Ronnie hadn’t picked the first Bush as VP. We figured it was a mistake even then.
Hi Mike, fellow pilgrim. Obama does indeed remind me of myself. I occasionaly listen to the (ugh) likes of Rush Limbo and Sean Hannity and I know I should have moved on years ago, I guess I need the balance, may I also add your comments. My God Blessed mix race self tells me with a crystal stare and a small voice that Wright is right and folks like Mike O will eventually fade into the sun set. Alas but not in my time.
Re: The ‘Original Fajita’
fa·jita - a Tex-Mex dish consisting of grilled strips of beef or chicken, often served wrapped in a soft tortilla with vegetable slices or a sauce
Note: I wonder whether anyone like to expound on the responsible use of BS (dung toro) as a seasoning?
And my mixed race son (Amerasian) and my Ugandan daughter are not overly impressed with Mr. Obama. He tends to support a philosphy that tends to minimize personal responsability and is amazingly naive on global issues.
As for fading into the sun; we all do, my friend. Being born is 100% fatal and none of us are getting out of this world alive. It’s what we do before then that matters. Do you not agree?
Fine first fruits, Mike! Blessings, and thanks.
At my age, the only fruits; and only one blood related. I’m proud of both; they’re both better people than me, in different ways. It’s all we can ask.