From the highly contentious battle royale between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination to the surprise (and scary-funny) choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s Republican running mate, the race for the White House dwarfed any and all movie output in terms of both entertainment value and audience interest.
(Tangentially, it’s curious that it was left to David Letterman and the seemingly harmless women of The View to ask the toughest questions during this once-in-a-lifetime political season.)
(Tangentially, it’s curious that it was left to David Letterman and the seemingly harmless women of The View to ask the toughest questions during this once-in-a-lifetime political season.)
Palin’s sassy, faux-populist presence gave the campaign an American Idol feel — a devolution of issue-based discourse in which style trumps substance. The synthesis of entertainment and politics reached its surreal apex during the simultaneous Saturday Night Live appearance of Palin, who stepped in for doppelganger Tina Fey, and guest host Josh Brolin, whose uncanny portrayal of George W. Bush in Oliver Stone’s W. had just hit theaters. Palin, a readymade TV star (and masturbation fantasy to hordes of hapless right-wing males across the nation), seemed right at home usurping the fictional version of herself, just another sign of the further fracturing of reality as we know it.
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