During this year’s Superbowl there was a big controversy over a Chrysler ad featuring Clint Eastwood that became a political football, with conservatives accusing the ad and by implication Eastwood of campaigning for Barack Obama’s re-election, and liberals defending Eastwood and the ad as honorable. Now Eastwood — in a very matter of factly way, without indulging in the rhetorical demonization of a Chuck Norris or a Ted Nugent — has endorsed Romney for President:
Photo: s_bukley / Shutterstock.com
My questions:
1. Will conservatives who demonized him last year and suggested he was a toady for Barack Obama now sing his praises and tout the endorsement?
2. Will liberals who defended him as honorable and upright last year let him have his simple endorsement without trying to discredit or diss him?
Answers: You betcha on the first. Don’t hold your breath on the second.
FOOTNOTE: In posing these questions on my Twitter account I got a typical response so indicative of the bankruptcy of our political discussion. Someone asked how I’d know about the liberals, do I keep a list of names and do all liberals look the same to me. One of the FUN parts about not being in either party or completely endorsing either Ls or Cs ideologically is how each side tries to categorize you. Rather than address a question, our politics is today all about trying to define someone who disagrees with you. And it usually evades the question — and the issue. Any real issue. It’s all about making it personal.
Many times it ends with the most tiresome popular phrase since someone wrote “defining moment”: “false equivilancy.”
But oftentimes “false equivilancy” when uttered by partisans is a tip off that there is…an equivlancy.
But yes, this is the question again:
Will each side stick to the same way they characterized Eastwood a year ago? Or now do they suddenly change their tune about Eastwood?
Maybe I’ll be proven wrong.
Go ahead:
Make my day.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.