Skip to main content

Clinton FTW...?

“Hillary Clinton’s running for President!”
“Yes we know, what else is new?”
“No it’s official now!”
“Oh…okay.”
That’s pretty much the universal reaction to the news that Hillary Clinton has thrown her hat into the ring. Putting aside the fact this was the worst kept secret in Washington, she intends to run for President a year from now. She announced it with a video that pretty much panders to the left wing in a fairly obvious way. It starts with a lot of different people from all walks of life looking forward to new changes in their lives and then Hillary shows up announcing her candidacy and that she wants to be the people’s champion to move America forward. The ad features people from at least three racial minorities, a gay and lesbian couple, an expectant couple, a young single mother, a woman on the verge of retiring, parents and children, siblings, hammering home the idea that she represents all Americans regardless of race, gender, sexuality, or social status. There’s also some awkward dialogue about American values and Hillary Clinton emphasizing the power of the ultra-rich. It’s pretty corny but all ads like this would be and it certainly will make an impact on some voters.
She’s going to have her struggles with past failures, her recent e-mail controversy, and even remnants from her husband’s presidency coming back to haunt her. Of course political rivals saw this coming, Rand Paul already having an attack ad prepared. It’s still possible other Democratic contenders will join the race but none of them have the popularity of the former First Lady, who if successful will move back into the White House, become the first woman president whose also a spouse of a previous president, and force Bill to be First Laddie. Which would certainly be historically interesting if it comes to fruition. But for now good luck to her. In any case it will at least be fun seeing her go up against the panel of rejected Looney Tunes known as the Republican candidates. Her theme of moving forward though not as readily accessible or potentially controversial as Obama’s “change”, is fine if uninspired, implying her competitors are moving backwards. But let’s see what becomes of her. Certainly knowing they may have to face her staring them down on the opposite side of a debate will scare away a chunk of her potential competition.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Strange History of the American Spoof Movie

Parody movies have been around for a lot longer than we tend to think of them. Even from the earliest days of Hollywood there were movies meant to satirize a particular subject or genre. In the silent era, Buster Keaton was responsible for a few. And in the early sound era, almost as soon as the monster pictures took off did you see comic versions of them -Abbott and Costello hosting a few. But parody movies tended to be subtle for most of cinema history, or parody came in conjunction with another goal of the comedy. It really wasn’t until the 1980s and 90s that it took off and became popularly understood. And there is perhaps a line to be drawn to the counterculture comedy explosion that began in the 1970s through avenues like  Saturday Night Live , which frequently parodied from even its earliest years popular movies and cultural properties of the time. But that is still a way’s back. To my generation though, ‘parody movie’ is perhaps a less known term than the more blunt ‘s...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Stylish and Charmingly Reinvented David Copperfield

The Personal History, Adventures, Experience and Observation of David Copperfield the Younger of Blunderstone Rookery (Which He Never Meant to Publish on Any Account)  is the most important book Charles Dickens ever wrote. It is not the most famous or influential by any means (that would of course be A Christmas Carol ), but it is the book that is the purest expression of the authors’ style, identity, and worldview. It is his most personal work, semi-autobiographical in its story of the chronology from infancy to adulthood of a character who overcomes great loss and hardships to find a fulfilling life as a writer. To read David Copperfield  is to understand Dickens himself. Armando Iannucci knew this when he decided to make a new adaptation of the novel for a twenty-first century audience. He also knew that Dickens adaptations are ubiquitous at this point. Films are a bit rarer, but every few years a new television adaptation rears its head to keep the authors’ unique world an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes on the Title Cards of The Lord of the Rings

It might be sacrilege for one who both considers The Lord of the Rings  trilogy to be one of the greatest triumphs of cinema and has been an avid lover of the films since adolescence, to declare that the original theatrical cuts of the films are better than the much beloved extended editions. Easily it’s my most controversial opinion regarding these movies. Don’t get me wrong, I do like the extended editions quite a lot, especially as someone who just enjoys spending time in that universe. They flesh it out more, add extra flavour, and in increasing the length by about an hour really emphasize the epic quality of these films. But I find that the original cuts are generally more cleanly paced, more seamlessly edited, and much more accessible to audiences. All the stuff there is to love about The Lord of the Rings  is there in the original versions, the plethora of new and extended scenes merely add to that for fans. And of those, they fall into three camps for me: 1....
1 comment
Read more