Like many of my acquaintance, I'm counting the days until the end of the Bush presidency, although I haven't gone as far as to install the countdown widget on my blog or web site. But I will breathe a huge sigh of relief when the new president is sworn in in January 2009, almost no matter who it is. (Well, maybe not Huckabee. I'd prefer someone who believes that the earth is round.)
I was appalled, therefore, to read today an article in the Entertainment section of the S.F. Chronicle stating that Oliver Stone is trying to get backing for - wait for it - a movie on the Bush presidency!
What an awful idea. I can't stand to look at the man, or listen to him talk, for more than about 30 seconds now; and Stone wants to direct an entire movie about him??
In case you were wondering who he wants to portray Bush in the movie? Josh Brolin. (This means nothing to me, as Josh Brolin has never appeared in any movie I wanted to see; and it sounds as though his record will continue unbroken.)
My only hope is that, if the movie is made, it'll be a total flop. Certainly the presidency is.
Timothy Bottoms has apparently made a little cottage industry playing Bush II in various venues. I didn't know about that until I checked out the IMDb page for The Paper Chase, a favorite movie of mine from the early 1970's, whose young long-haired star I once upon a time sort of resembled. Bottoms comes from an acting family, and his three brothers are all in the acting business too.
ReplyDeleteWhy anyone would want to play Bush II straight is a mystery to me. Dana Carvey nearly made a career out of imitating Bush I some years back, but recent heart disease complications have kept him out of work, and the limelight, for the last five years. Pity, he was a real talent.
I've never been able to understand my fellow citizens in the Red States. Critics of Nixon used to posit the proposition that his admirers believed he was speaking "secretly" to them, in a kind of code language. Nixon fans "knew" that the old sly fox was "putting on a show" by saying all the right PC things, while furthering his (and their) agenda behind closed doors. Well, he certainly was doing things behind closed doors, but perhaps not what those people imagined.
Perhaps something of the same kind has developed with Bush II. Bush's awkwardness, his poker-faced stupidity, are all applauded by his supporters, who read these as signs of "honesty" and "steadfastness" and "straight-shooting." Ha. Dubya is an imposter. He's Charlie McCarthy, the only question is who's pulling the strings. Historians will be telling us all about it in 15 years, but by then we'll all be knee-deep in the shit he's set in motion over the last eight sad years. Why the press insists on withholding these revelations until after all the corruption and deception has worked its way through the system is another mystery. During the Nixon debacle, investigative journalism actually caught up with reality for a few weeks. Folks like Cheney vowed that'd never happen again, and they've pretty much succeeded in keeping everything covered up, so far.
I'll admit to fantasizing about a madman assassinating Dubya. Where are these anarchists when we need them?
We certainly don't deserve what we've gotten the last seven years. Our young men have given their lives, and their best years, for nothing. We've spent our nest egg on bombs and war materiel. The rich have gotten richer. The poor have gotten poorer. The middle class is fast disappearing.
Bush's greatest accomplishment was in duping ordinary middle class Americans into thinking that stealing their jobs, their health care, their pensions, their resources, and their honor, was somehow in their own interest. How incredibly stupid we've been as a nation. An embarrassment, really, to the world.
The next president, whoever it is, will have a fine mess on his/her hands.