The Rise and Fall of Stupid.

The news is no longer meant to be important. It’s just entertainment.
— Steve Schmidt, McCain-Palin senior advisor.

I don’t think much of Julianne Moore as an actress. And I despise Sarah Palin as a politician and human being. But Julianne Moore playing Sarah Palin? Priceless! In the HBO movie, GAME CHANGE, Moore gives a bravura performance as the Ditz Heard Round The World, the vice-presidential nominee in the 2008 American presidential election.

Steve Schmidt‘s correct assessment of the 24/7 news cycle is why Sarah Palin became a household name at all: Entertainment. Rubbernecking car-crash entertainment. We all knew it was a bloodied and broken train wreck from the get-go – but we couldn’t turn away.

Directed by Jay Roach (no stranger to political films, with the Emmy-winning RECOUNT), GAME CHANGE focuses on a small section of the book of the same name (by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, who make a cameo as reporters during the “amniotic fluid” bit), and is unabashedly All About Sarah. It was she whom the John McCain presidential campaign tapped to effect the “game change” so desperately needed in a moribund Republican field brimmed with sour old white guys (all polls indicated that if McCain chose anyone from the existing field – especially that haunted succubus Joe Lieberman – he would lose); it was she who was counted on to inject fresh blood into a cloying old boys’ club with her aw-shucks tits-and-ass; and it was she who would ultimately grind the McCain campaign down to a bleating loser freak show with her unbounded ignorance and dogged refusal to educate herself.

Film follows her meteoric rise and as-meteoric fall, told from the points of view of Palin’s two top aides, Operations Chief Steve Schmidt (Woody Harrelson) and Senior Advisor Nicolle Wallace (Sarah Paulson). Though they initially believed Palin was a “red light performer” (someone who didn’t do well in coaching, but turned on the charisma when the cameras were on), a few national interviews later, Schmidt came to the realization she “knew nothing” and that her selection as McCain’s running mate was his gravest tactical error in his hastiness to shake up the campaign – a campaign that had slipped from McCain’s grasp as soon as Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination.

“Obama has changed the game.”

GAME CHANGE is a true American Horror Story. By electing Barack Obama in November 2008, America dodged one of the most horrifying bullets in the history of the Republic: someone even more ignorant and incurious than W. Yes, Palin would have only been VP, but also would have been – as the commentators reminded us daily – only one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the Presidency. The experience of running a campaign for a certifiable imbecile gussied up to be a figurehead was so telling on Schmidt and Wallace – they were so put off by Palin’s ignorance and their own begrudging promotion of that ignorance – that they came over to the sensible side! They might not refer to themselves as Democrats, but they sure as hell ain’t Republicans no more, as their constant pusses on MSNBC attest.

Asked their opinions on the film and book, neither of them deny anything, both commenting their portrayals are commendable – even though the film fully places the blame on Schmidt’s shoulders for vetting Palin without asking her one policy question. Harrelson’s Schmidt laments this fact more than once, and is man enough to take the burden of blame. And real life Schmidt is man enough to do the same, one of his many strong points – as a human being and a sensible Republican (which is an oxymoron that just means non-Republican nowadays).

Julianne Moore – with the help of makeup, mannerisms and speech – IS Sarah Palin. Not overplaying, not satirizing, not poking fun; a full-bodied performance that captures everything we know of Palin, from her confident stump persona to her ingratiating wink, from her shrikey vocal stylings to the dropping of her g’s. Also, those blank looks she gives her advisors could have been played as ass-klown, instead, Moore chooses to mix in wonder and frustration and hurt. We would never see these actual faces from Palin, so Moore’s performance is doubly commendable.

Ed Harris is a very sympathetic, though foul-mouthed, John McCain (every second word is ‘fuck’, as in real life); Peter MacNicol and Ron Livingstone are advisors, and Jamey Sheridan, who played the hick Devil in THE STAND, is McCain’s speechwriter (it all falls into place now!).

And what would a quasi-biopic of Palin be without – Tina Fey? Palin squirms in her seat watching SNL’s Fey take her apart simply by parroting her own words. Ironic, as Palin’s own words are parroted lines to begin with.

Through excellent special effects, GAME CHANGE inserts Moore as Palin into the real life news, interview situations and stumps we’ve all seen, encapsulating everything that mattered from that 2008 campaign – from Palin’s hasty selection, stunning rollout, “inspiring” convention speech, to the “Troopergate” controversy, the disastrous Couric interview, the flip-flop Bridge to Nowhere, the Family Values hypocrisy of her daughter’s pregnancy, the elitist $150,000 wardrobe, to the memorized Biden debate, going rogue, and down to the election night wire when she argued to make a concession speech alongside John McCain. And of course, we are made privy to the scarring backstage kabuki on each of these bytes.

Schmidt realized that trying to “teach” Palin anything for the Vice Presidential debate with Joe Biden was futile (an early scene shows tutors pointing out Germany on a map to her, and trying to outline the distinctions between the Iraq and Afghanistan wars), and resorts to making her memorize a few talking points that she would pivot back to no matter the questions. In other words, parroting lines, no better than a school kid cramming for a test she knows nothing about; no better than W prepped by Carl Rove. Vindicating the horrifying fear we’ve always held that the country is run by a bunch of literal morons.

A refreshing aspect of this background look at the McCain-Palin campaign is that Schmidt and co. were well aware of the dumbass they had on their hands. When Katie Couric asks Palin which papers she reads, Schmidt rails at the TV monitor, “Name one fucking paper!” The whole room breaks out in sighs of disbelief and horror on Palin’s now-infamous reply: “All of them.” And Schmidt turns to Devil and bewails, “What have we done?” That’s never been portrayed before in such stark reality. For the sake of the campaign the advisors retained a bold front in the shadow of their pathetic figurehead, and at times it seemed like EVERYONE on the campaign must have been as mentally lethargic as Palin, for them to allow her to keep spouting such un-sense. But there are always people running things who “KNOW” what’s right and wrong. (That’s why people like Hannity and O’Reilly are unforgiveable: because they are NOT dunces, which means that the venal disinformation they promulgate is a CHOICE. They CHOOSE to be this evil and selfish and duplicitous.)

No real characterizations of any of the spouses or children – there is just too much else in this bustling movie to keep us entertained – with David Barry Gray playing Todd Palin like some nervous day-player sharing a bed with Julianne Moore pretending to be her husband. (Sarah doesn’t make it easy on him, climbing into bed with her hair up and her glasses on. Can anyone say No Chemistry?)

Sad yet funny: a gaggle of poor Down Syndrome babies play Palin’s retarded newborn son Trig. Probably the only person who exploits her Down Syndrome kid more than the parents who allowed their kids to curl up in Moore’s arms is Palin herself, who uses all her children as tools to promote her celebrity.

humanizing the inhuman

Palin is portrayed as a compassionate mother for deciding to birth Trig even though she was warned of his disability during her pregnancy. Let’s say it out loud that she didn’t choose to birth that poor kid because she’s compassionate, but because she’s an Anti-Choice fanatic (of course, she calls it “pro-life”). If she possessed a shred of human dignity, she would have aborted that kid and spared it the pain of being Sarah Palin’s kid. The engraved command from Jesus got lost in the mail.

And isn’t it the law of averages that a nudz like Palin would eventually have pumped out a Downie? I’m surprised that her other four didn’t come out retarded. Politically incorrect – or what everyone is thinking? Five young nudzes contributing their low rent genes to the human pool.

More “humanizing” as Palin takes a call from her son in Iraq. When she hangs up, she muses, “My son is safe.” And we feel a slight blade in our guts as we know she is trying to convince herself of her son’s wellbeing, against the reality which is exactly the opposite. We feel Moore’s performance conveying that she has to push thoughts like that out of her head if she is to go forward fake-smiling on the stump.

I have no sympathy for people who doggedly retain their ignorance past the point of being given the opportunity to learn. Palin birthing five kids is not a sign of her “humanity” but of her naïveté and libido. The ignorant should not be breeding! Palin has brought more ignorance into the world by raising her family under her aegis. And her underage daughter (against the tenets of her own “faith” and politics) also brought an ignorant little shit into the world, via father Levi Johnston, who cannot string one sentence together. Who in this world thinks spreading these low rent genes is beneficial to the human race? Other low rent genes. All these maroon-necks should be rounded up and swept into the Pit of Sarlacc! Don’t aggrandize them for the sake they were able to breed. Even turkeys and amoeba breed.

Which brings us to:

the real reason sarah palin is loathed by sensible people

GAME CHANGE highlights not just Palin’s vast brain wasteland, but her incuriousness; the fact that she never wanted to improve herself. If Republicans and Sarah-philes think this is a hit piece, all they have to do is note where Palin is NOW in her world knowledge. Answer: stuck in exactly the same rut. She is a showbiz personality, not a politician or a – snort – “statesman.”

And that is why every sensible person in the world of politics (Republican, Democrat, Independent and non-voter alike) has no patience for the hockey mom with the no-sense mouth. It’s not that she is ignorant (every one of us is ignorant of many things at many points in our lives), it’s that she never sought to allay that ignorance with actual “learning.” When we see her shuffling through innumerable flash-cards, it is a cram session, not actual understanding of policies. She believed Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11, she didn’t know North and South Korea were separate countries, she thought the Queen ran Britain – and you know what, after all the training and prepping and travel and information – she STILL believes all that. Now, if you want to live in a fantasy world where Paul Revere was “makin’ sure as he was ridin’ through town to send those warning shots and bells” to “warn the British that they weren’t gonna be takin’ away our arms…” that’s okay, you have the right to remain ignorant – but keep your puss out of politics! Not only that, when alerted to her egregious mistakes – she maintains she is right!

That’s why sensible people hate her. And if you feel ‘hate’ is too strong a word, how about despise, loathe, abhor [crack your thesaurus].

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The media articulated the problem. Campbell Brown: “In fairness, probably most people couldn’t name a Supreme Court case – but most people are not campaigning to be vice president.” Fareed Zakaria: “It’s not that she doesn’t know the right answer – it’s that she clearly does not understand the question.” Yet the Straight Talk Express roared on into the potentially black future. (Actually, I take that back – it was definitely a “black” future – ha!)

Did Steve Schmidt really shout down Palin in that manner? In real life it’s a lot more “diplomatic” and roundabout, but I guess he had nothing to lose at that point. Schmidt starts going for the jugular around the time Palin realizes her celebrity and “goes rogue,” telling him blatantly, “I’m the one raising millions of dollars and if I’m the one they’re flockin’ to see, I’m gonna do what I want!” Her lies about Troopergate (“I’m happy I was cleared of all charges”) and husband Todd’s involvement in the secessionist Alaskan Independent Party (“He checked the wrong box”) cause Schmidt to yell at her, “You cannot say these things if they are untrue. That’s not the way we run this campaign!”

The crowd fervor at Palin’s hate-filled, racist stump speeches (“Obama pallin’ around with terrorists…”) spills into McCain’s stumps, and Schmidt advises McCain to dial back the rhetoric when they hear crowds shouting about Obama, “He’s a socialist!” “Terrorist!” and “Kill him!” Eventually culminating in a classic faceoff with that braindead redneck cunt who claims, “I read about Obama. He’s an Arab,” McCain snatching the mic back and educating her (and the crowd), “No, ma’am, he’s a decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues, and that’s what this campaign is all about.”

We wonder why the filmmakers have such unrequited love for this guy (“This is not the campaign I wanted to run”), whose cowardice allowed Palin’s unchecked mouth to continue to the end of the campaign. “Cowardice,” you say? Yes. No matter the contention over McCain’s military service, flying heroic missions bombing women and children in Viet Nam, or his POW record and alleged torture, the facts during this campaign speak for themselves. When asked by Schmidt to step in and put the brakes on Palin he declines, “Not gonna happen, Stevie boy. She might go after me.” War Hero.

McCain watches Obama newscasts with growing humility and awe. Every time we see snippets of Obama, it is heady, exhilarating, tear-jerking. How could the Republicans compete by putting up a parrot that they were teaching lines, against this constitutional law professor? And to then put the parrot up to denigrate the law professor for being a “community organizer” as if that was a bad thing? (And isn’t that one of the strangest elements of the McCain Campaign’s final legs – that it seemed like Obama was running against Palin?) We remember that time in our veins, when Obama’s intelligence contrasted the outgoing president’s idiocy, and how his eloquence contrasted with the stuttering venality of the old guy with the tits-and-ass sidekick. In other words, the rest of the book Game Change is just waiting to explode onscreen…

Tina Brown (The Daily Beast): “The real revelation in GAME CHANGE: Campaigns turn our politicians into lunatics.”

Luckily, the campaign did nothing to affect Sarah Palin. She was already a lunatic.

END

Movie For Schmucks.

Steve Carell is a schmuck. And in DINNER FOR SCHMUCKS, Steve Carell is a schmuck, a bothersome new friend of Paul Rudd, who is not exactly a schmuck, but can’t seem to break into that comedy leading man status that he deserves. We presume his agent and manager and reader must be schmucks.

Carell and Rudd do a fine job with the uneven material they are stuck with, and are surrounded by an exceptional supporting cast that allows us to not feel like total schmucks for wasting our time watching this.

Tim (Rudd) is about to be promoted at his office job. To get in good with the executive crowd, he must attend an executive dinner where the execs hold a competition to see who can bring the biggest schmuck as a dinner guest.

Tim thinks he has hit the loser jackpot when he meets Barry (Carell) by almost running him over trying to rescue a dead mouse from the street (to put into one of his many dioramas featuring stuffed mice, from picnic scenes to The Last Supper). But scatterbrain Barry almost destroys Tim’s life before they can even make the dinner, ruining his relationship, his house, and his chances of promotion.

Jemaine Clement, as Kieran the performance artist, steals the movie effortlessly, departing from his FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS character completely, into an avant-garde beargarden of hilarious fetishism.

Zach Galifianakis is Barry’s boss, Thurman, who has probably been freebasing on General Zod as he wants everyone to bow down before him; he believes himself psychic enough to hold Barry in a state of paralysis with his mind, which Barry encourages by actually being paralyzed when told.

Built and busty Lucy Punch is Tim’s sexually-crazed one-night-stand stalker – a steaming sexy woman who is actually funny as well. Must be the British blue blood.

It’s amusing seeing Ron Livingston in a straight-guy office role, the same “type” he lambasted in OFFICE SPACE.

The great David Walliams (LITTLE BRITAIN) in a relatively straight role, the funniest thing about him, his imposing Swiss investor accent, that sounds nothing like a Swiss accent and even less like an investor.

Bruce Greenwood is Tim’s callous boss who hosts the dinner; Kristen Schaal and Larry Wilmore (THE DAILY SHOW) are some of the talented cast that keep the movie from sinking, and we even see Jeff Dunham and one of his puppets at the dinner (I’m surprised he didn’t win the schmuck competition).

Remade from the French film, THE DINNER GAME (LE DINER DE CONS, 1998), directed by Jay Roach (RECOUNT 2008), DINNER is a reasonable farce that falls apart when we arrive at the actual Dinner For Schmucks! Because throughout the movie, Barry was painted as a true schmuck, but at the dinner, he brings his A-game mouse dioramas. Oh, so he’s simply an eccentric artist! And who looks like the schmuck now trying to make fun of Salvador Dali? (It’s like trying to make fun of Jackson Pollock; sure, the guy is talentless, but to display the force of will to create so much product that trumpets your inadequacy – that’s genius!)

Throughout the story, Barry is an unfocused dweeb, his mind wandering on mundane tangents, with no social graces and clueless on human interaction. But we don’t see this side of him at the dinner – we see the artiste side. Why is Barry suddenly this poignant, passionate soul in touch with the universe through art? To get the Movie Message across, of course.

Shhhh-boing!! Message received! Turns out the real schmucks are the people holding the dinner, because they cold-heartedly laugh at others less fortunate than themselves… But hang on! There’s a difference between people “less fortunate” and actual schmucks. Schmucks SHOULD be laughed at! Barry, for the first part of the film, was a perfect contender for the title of schmuck: incognizant of a woman’s sexual advances, believing his boss could psychically control him, wrecking his friend’s house, relationship, career unthinkingly… His character didn’t arc to arrive at the message – it was rewritten, suddenly making him cognizant of what characteristics NOT to display in public. Leading us to realize screenwriters David Guion and Michael Handelman don’t really know what they’re doing.

What a coupla schmucks!

END

Swinging! Like a man, man!

He’s the sexiest, swingingest secret agent ever to combat evil – DOCTOR Evil, that is…. mwohahaha ha ha ha….He’s Austin Powers, arguably Mike Myers’s greatest, most memorable, most embraced, most quoted icon – in the film that made it all shagadelic, baby! AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY is a hip skewering of the spy movie genre, taking especial aim at James Bond. The more you know James, the more you’ll love Austin.

Myers is Austin Powers: superspy, posh Brit accent, smashing fashion sense, a Byrds wig, unruly teeth, and a gigantic male… symbol draped around his neck. We meet him dancing in the streets of 1960s swinging London, and I think he’s doing The Froog.

Austin Powers’s nemesis is Doctor Evil (also played by Myers), a marriage of Donald Pleasance’s Blofeld (from YOU ONLY LIVE TWICE) and apparently, as Myers confesses, Lorne Michaels (his producer on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE). Myers whipcracks it out of the park with Dr. Evil, for as everyone knows, a hero is nothing without the villain who loves to hate him. And Myers immortalizes his hero and villain by imbuing them both with equal amounts of thunderball mojo.

In the opening 1960s sequence, Dr. Evil escapes Powers by cryogenically freezing himself in an orbital rocket. So Powers volunteers to freeze himself as well, to combat Dr. Evil should he ever return to Earth. In the 1990s, Dr. Evil returns to Earth, and Austin is unfrozen to combat him; an old-world-hero for an old-world villain. (Yes, it’s the plot to 1993’s DEMOLITION MAN, only more froogy.)

Dr. Evil sets up his underground lair in Nevada and tries to blackmail the world governments for “one MILLion DOLLars!” at which point his Number Two (Robert Wagner, brilliantly playing it straight) advises him that one million dollars isn’t much these days. When he changes his ransom to “one HUNdred BILLion DOLLars,” we start to twig to this movie’s hook. It is part spy spoof, part fish-out-of-water, all Swedish-made penis enlarger.

Meanwhile, Powers is having his own revelations – that the 90s are not as promiscuous as the 60s he left behind, and the slinky flirtations he engaged in with his previous spy partner, Mrs. Kensington (tightly leathered Mimi Rogers) are wasted on his current salubrious spyhard, Mrs. Kensington’s daughter, Vanessa (achingly beautiful Elizabeth Hurley), a 90s woman, i.e. repressed and uptight about her sexuality. (Which might explain Hugh’s wayward thrust with that Hollywood Boulevard skank. As Bill Maher has noted, “The most beautiful woman in the world – somebody’s sick of fucking her!”)

The innocence of both hero and villain in a world that has left them behind is this movie’s greatest hook. Snappily written by Myers and directed by Jay Roach like a man, man!

Mindy Sterling is Dr. Evil’s loudmouth secretary, Will Ferrell is a skin-darkened evil henchman, Michael York gamely plays Austin’s boss, Basil Exposition, Fabiana Udenio is evil siren, Alotta Fagina (still not as dopey a name as Pussy Galore), and Seth Green perfectly captures X-Gen angst as Scott Evil, Dr. Evil’s estranged son, whose pragmatic “Just-shoot-them” solutions to Dr. Evil’s diabolically creative “Bond Villain” snares are a constant source of vexation for Dr. Evil.

Does that make you HORNY, baby, yeah?!

END

Stealing the World with Hanging Chad.

Those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.
– Josef Stalin.

RECOUNT is another nail in the “democracy” coffin. Even for those who detest politics, this movie unfolds like a thriller rather than a dusty legal doc.

Surely no one in Amerika believes the lie of “One Man One Vote”? Surely no one believes their vote “counts”? It’s not that everyone’s vote doesn’t count. The lowest-rung incompetents empowered with the fate of the country and, by association, the world, do count the majority of votes, sure. But a bigger percentage than would make anyone feel comfortable simply gets thrown out, lost, disqualified, unregistered, purged, re-directed, or – cue duplicity on toast – RECOUNTED.

Back in 2000, Republican liar and nitwit, George W. Bush, stole the American presidency from Democrat man-bear-pig Al Gore on the strength of confusion generated by a disturbingly imperfect, manual voting system exacerbated by disturbingly imperfect manual morons.

Written by Danny Strong and directed by Jay Roach, RECOUNT tells the backstage story of the infamous Florida Recount, from the hanging chad to the purged felons. Well-researched, well-written, well-directed; myriad events on their own separate tracks or classified at the time, now juxtaposed into a cogent story of deceit, apathy, misfeasance and malfeasance that rivals the most twisted pulp fiction Hollywood can rat-spit.

Kevin Spacey is Ron Klain, Al Gore’s ex-Chief of Staff, who returns to the Democrat fold when, during the last stages of the 2000 presidential election, a computer glitch necessitates a recount of votes in Florida. The winner in Florida would win the presidency.

Denis Leary is excellent as a Gore strategist and Klain’s right-hand; his pivotal scene is explaining the significance of “chad.” The chad was the perforated stub that voters had to punch out on their ballot cards. Chad (plural: chad) were notorious for “hanging” from their perforations if they were not fully punched out, and counting machines sometimes re-sealed these “hanging chad” as the cards were fed through. This meant the person’s vote did not register. To exacerbate problems, the ballot cards were “butterfly ballot” design (see below), that confused people who rarely use their brains – that would be 90% of voters – many votes accidentally cast for Pat Buchanan’s Reform Party (which Buchanan freely admits today).

The Democrats sue for a recount – and the Republicans roll out their big gun lawyer: James Baker (an imperious Tom Wilkinson), Reagan’s Chief of Staff and George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of State. Ed Begley Jr. is dyslexic Democrat lawyer, David Boies, while Bob Balaban plays snide Republican lobbyist and Baker’s right-hand, Ben Ginsberg.

In Florida law, if the vote difference between candidates is less than 30,000, every county has to run their ballots through the machines a second time – an automatic recount. Bush versus Gore was so close, an auto recount was assured… But 18 of the 67 counties didn’t run their ballots a second time, leaving 1.5 million votes uncounted.

What happens NOW in a “democracy”? Confusion.

Not only were 1.5 mil uncounted; it is well-documented that every time the ballot cards are run through the machines, the total is different – because the chad get pummelled: mangled, resealed, hanging, tearing, swinging, dimpled…

The Purge List is unveiled: people disallowed to vote – felons and names who resembled felons. Since Nixon, the Republicans have always come off as a pigpen of deceitful, underhanded thugs. By the 2000 election, their thuggery and unethical practices were out in the open: Republicans would rather block or confuse the election process (and thereby lose even Republican votes), than have Democrat votes counted, because they play the percentages. They know that if the process were allowed to proceed fairly, they would ALWAYS LOSE, because on sheer numbers, more Democrats than Republicans vote, so in blocking, say, 30% of votes from getting counted, they block a higher percentage of Democrat votes from being counted than Republican votes.

Even as I write this, the Republicans are conspiring to steal the election from Barack Obama in 2008, evidence of their lies and talking-snake politics and smears already apparent.

Katherine Harris (Laura Dern), airheaded Republican Secretary of State of Florida, is called upon to adjudicate the recount. She too is clueless, only concerned with her troweled makeup and regarding herself the incarnation of biblical Queen Esther (who intervened with husband King Xerxes and saved Jews from more oppression). So Sarah Palin isn’t the first underqualified female Republican dumb c**t with delusions of grandeur…

Every time it looks like the Democrats have lost the Recount legal battle, they get reprieve after reprieve, pushing back the deadline date for recounts, gaining numbers, gaining credibility…

At one point, when hand recounts are called for and the Republicans (led by George W. Bush) protest the method, Klain uncovers a statute in Texas that cites hand recounts as the “preferred method” – signed into law by Texas’s then-governor – George W. Bush!

It is amazing to realize what a JUDAS WHORE Joe Lieberman was even way back in 2000, while he was still posing as a Democrat – on the Vice President’s ticket with Gore, no less! Actual footage shows Leiberman on MEET THE PRESS, insisting undated military votes should be counted (swinging the votes in Bush’s favor) – after he was expressly advised by Klain that they shouldn’t be counted because with no post-mark, it could not be determined whether they were submitted after the election date.

If the country was as non-partisan as this movie, there might have been a different outcome – it’s painfully regretful to imagine that one thread of time unravels in that non-W direction, like a sci-fi scenario – but the Republicans overlorded Florida: not only was Harris stultifying recounting, Florida’s governor was George W.’s mildly-Special-Olympics brother, Jeb.

Katherine Harris declares Bush winner before anything had been resolved and (true to Republican form) she lies outright: “Democracy has triumphed once again” (though democratic processes were not used) “the true winner of the election is the rule of law” (though no laws were adhered to); ending with the lies of a Bush win and the lies of “God bless America” (the lie of God, or even if there was God, the arrogance to think It would “bless” a deceitful whore like Amerika).

The Dems escalated the case to the Supreme Court in the now-infamous Bush vs. Gore.

History tells us Bush won, the Supremes decreeing there was just not enough time to recount everything (geez! You’d think each citizen wanted their vote to matter or something!). The actual numbers tell a different story – but we’ll never discover it, all the ballot cards with their accusatory chad relegated to a subterranean vault guarded by a Balrog.

Here’s the stinger for you democracy-lovers and Amerikans-in-denial: Florida legislature planned to award the 25 Florida electoral votes to Bush ANYWAY. No matter the outcome of the recount.

Ergo: your vote, counted or not, doesn’t count.

Movie outro shows the real players in this thriller/drama/execution of sanity, while Tom Petty’s Won’t Back Down plays us out.

Movie ends on a nauseous note – Bush’s acceptance speech. The last scene shows Bush and Gore in split screen, acceptance and concession speeches, both ending on the same words, “God bless America.”

Only one of them meant it.

END

Fock This!

There are two big laughs in MEET THE FOCKERS – but I can’t remember where they are.

Sequel to the minimally-superior MEET THE PARENTS, this movie once again makes a fool of Robert De Niro, continues to make a neb of Ben Stiller, while orbiting megastars Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman add little or nothing with their “oversexed teenagers” routine as Stiller’s hippie parents. Gwyneth Paltrow’s mother and Stiller’s blond fiancé get their screentime on as plot conveniences.

Silly lines (“I am going to be Pamela Martha Focker. I know how that sounds but I don’t care!”), amateur looping (“Step on the gas, Gaylord!” – a looped line just as we see a cop), contrived plot (an unnecessary baby nephew hovers, pets featured for specific gags, then disappear completely, people going through motions only to end up at next plot point), and shallow characters, it is the star power – and star power alone – that keeps this poster-movie for mediocrity afloat.

The Byrnes family (headed by De Niro) meets the Focker parents (Streisand and Hoffman) and – so the junkets inform us – “all hell breaks loose.”

Yes, this is hell.

END