What Clint Eastwood Did Last Night

By  Kevin Williams, Director/Co-Producer, FEAR OF A BLACK REPUBLICAN

As a Filmmaker who happens to be Republican, I want to share a few thoughts about Clint Eastwood’s speaking at the Republican National Convention last night.  Clint is an artist and if you don’t know, one who changed the Hollywood system when he became one of the first Actors to become a Director with PLAY MISTY FOR ME (1971).  Working in the film industry myself, I feel a great kinship with Clint as a fellow filmmaker and as someone who is politically active on a local level.  And like millions of other Americans, I was very curious and being a Republican and a Filmmaker – very pumped to hear what he would say about this current Election.

 Needless to say, Clint exceeded my expectations in ways I didn’t consider before I turned on my TV last night.  I expected him a take on his now infamous Super Bowl Car Commercial from this past February.  Wrong!  Clint would just trot out, give an enhanced Oscar speech with a few great lines punched up with a Dirty Harry reference or mention that being the Mayor of Carmel, CA was more Executive experience than our President had. Wrong!  I thought he would take back his “It’s Halftime” line from said Super Bowl commercial and say something like “Now this here in Tampa… this is Halftime” in his great, gravelly voice.  Wrong!  Finally, I thought “well, he has TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE coming out next month and won’t do anything to hurt his movie or his chances for one last Best Actor Nomination (lots of buzz on this).  Wrong Again!

What Clint did last night was nothing less than extraordinary and a great, self-less sacrifice for his Country and his fellow Americans.  By taking the stage last night and employing the empty-chair prop, Clint did what no other Republican or Mitt Romney could ever do… make it okay to make fun of the President and humanize him for his decisions, his choice of focus and most importantly, his choice of who he represents.  Clint humanized the President and brought him down from the self-created (and self-restricting) lofty heights of the “untouchable” to the human level of “touchable.”  In my opinion, the President’s Media and Campaign Guard have built an artificial castle wall around the President to his detriment.  If President Obama and his Party play it smart and humble, we may find that Clint’s empty chair may help Obama 2012 because of such humanization.  However, that isn’t likely and I think Clint probably took this possibility into account before last night.

Read the Rest of the story at  What Clint Eastwood Did Last Night.

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