All American Clint

Clint Eastwood is my neighbor.  Well, we live in the same county, our kids are in the same school district and once I saw him pumping his own gas next to me at the local station.

That made my day.

So did his “speech” at the Republican National Convention last week; it made my day. 

Clint EastwoodIn an 11 minute improvised ramble he spoke to an empty chair that he pretended was President Obama, made rude and incorrect statements, and just barely endorsed Mitt Romney.  Press and public reaction were a mix of embarrassment, bewilderment, horror and delight. 

Those were my reactions too. 

Some of my delight was schadenfreude.  After three days of a GOP infomercial; totally scripted bland empty promises and outright lies, it was like seeing Emperor Mitt without any clothes. Clint was the true, actual, real GOP.  Like his party-mates, he was misinformed or outright dishonest (saying it’s time to elect a non attorney for President - Mitt actually is an attorney; saying Obama started the war in Afghanistan, etc.).  Unlike the automatons at the podium, he was just like many of the delegates there in Tampa; self-contradictory, out of touch, unprepared, an old white guy to whom black people are invisible.  And passive-aggressive, nasty; twice he had the “invisible” Obama say, “Go fuck yourself.” 

Jon Stewart on The Daily Show called his speech “The Old Man and the Seat.”

But as a neighbor, I sort of like Clint (we all refer to him by his first name.)  He is an active environmentalist and has purchased lots of scenic property in our very picturesque and very rich community and donated it to the park system to prevent it from being developed into mansions and gated communities.   He bought a funky old coastal restaurant/inn and restored it beautifully and plays piano at the bar some nights.  He funded the local youth center (very nice pool tables and recording studio.)  Annoyed at local politicians, he didn’t just criticize or try to play on his privilege; he actually ran for mayor of Carmel-by-the-Sea, population 3700, in 1986 and served an honorable term.

Read his Wikipedia bio. He has had a full and interesting life.  Many consider him a macho icon; his cowboy and cop movies, phrases like “Go ahead, make my day” and “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly” are American memes.  And he’s a creative icon, especially as a director.  I was particularly impressed that he made two movies about the World War II battle at Iwo Jima, one from the American perspective and the other Japanese. 

Clint has described his politics as libertarian.  He says he is liberal on social rights (he supports gay rights, is pro-choice) and fiscally conservative.  He voted for John McCain in 2008, he says, because he was a war veteran, but that he didn’t agree with him on a lot.  He made an intriguing commercial for Detroit car companies that aired during this year’s Super Bowl that sounded pro-Obama and the auto bailout.  He’s a little hard to pin down.

But someone thought it was a good idea to have him speak at the Republican Convention, without vetting his speech or making him do what everyone else had to, use a teleprompter.  They thought that Clint would get attention, make the Republicans seem – what?  Hip? Macho? As loved by Hollywood as are the Democrats?  Who knows?  But the next day some newspapers, even though Mitt gave his acceptance speech right after Clint, featured Clint, and the chair. The Financial Times reported that 1.5 million people watched Clint’s speech the next day on YouTube; only 50,000 watched Mitt’s.  All kinds of “empty chair” jokes followed.

Our local weekly newspaper, the Carmel Pine Cone, scored an exclusive interview with Clint this week, his first after the Tampa soliloquy.  Headline: “Eastwood says his convention appearance was ‘mission accomplished.’ (A good idea to quote what George W. Bush proclaimed on the aircraft carrier years before the killing stopped?)

Clint tried to summarize what he meant to say: “ President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people…Obama has broken a lot of the promises he made when he took office…people should feel free to get rid of any politician who’s not doing a good job…It was supposed to be a contrast with all the scripted speeches, because I’m Joe Citizen…I’m a movie maker, but I have the same feelings as the average guy out there.”

Clint, and the sympathetic right wing Pine Cone editor claimed that the media’s critique of his speech was all a left wing conspiracy (even though Fox News was a part of the critique), How great, they said, that blogs and tweet-sphere were universal in their affirmation and adulation. Oh yeah? Try looking at the public comments on the New York Times story – not too positive or sympathetic. Part of that left-wing conspiracy I guess.

So I guess I would say this about Clint: Thanks, neighbor, for some good citizen things you’ve done here on the Central Coast of California. But I wonder why we Americans pay so much attention to the political views of actors? Who’s to say George Clooney or Sean Pean or Susan Sarandon or Clint Eastwood understands more about what’s best for the US than I do, or than a government professional does, or that I should give their opinion any weight at all? 

Because in that speech Clint seemed sadly a bit like Americans these days; like many in our country, he thinks he’s a young macho stud gunslinger, alone on the western frontier or bullying city folk he does’t like, when he might actually be growing a little out of it and nasty and senile. (We always talk about America as a young country – I think we are in at least a crazy adolescence if not a crazy dementia.) To All-American Clint multiracial people right next to him are invisible. He figured he could wing it; Americans are known for acting first, thinking later, if ever. And like a lot of my fellow citizens who pretend to be an Average Joe, he really loves being in the spotlight. It’s that American exceptionalism the Republicans revere; look at us, ours is the only way, pay attention to us, obey us

I hope that kind of American doesn’t shoot its way into the polls and the White House this fall. 

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter