How Sarah Palin Changed the Game!!

Dear Commons Community,

Last Saturday, HBO aired its controversial movie, Game Change,  on Sarah Palin’s run for vice president in 2008.  Due to popular demand, HBO has been rerunning the movie every night since.  MSNBC interviewed two of the principal players on the McCain/Palin team last night – Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt – both of whom verified the depictions in the movie.

Today in the Daily News,  columnist Richard Cohen provided his critique. Cohen does not hold back in his comments:

“At some point while watching HBO’s absolutely smashing movie “Game Change,” it occurred to me that Sarah Palin has ruined America. .. With her selection as John McCain’s running mate, American politics lost its way.

The movie portrays Palin as an ignoramus. She did not know that Queen Elizabeth does not run the British government, and she did not know that North and South Korea are different countries. She seemed not to have heard of the Federal Reserve. She called Joe Biden “O’Biden,” and she thought America went to war in Iraq because Saddam Hussein, not Al Qaeda, had attacked on Sept. 11, 2001.

At the same time, she was a liar. In the movie, she was called exactly that by McCain’s campaign chief, Steve Schmidt, who came to realize that one of Palin’s great talents was to deny the truth.”

Cohen goes on to comment on several of this year’s “dysfunctional” Republican nominees – Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, etc.  all of whom were seriously lacking.  He concludes:

“So far, the Palin effect has been limited to the GOP. Surely, though, there lurks in the Democratic Party potential candidates who have seen Palin and taken note. Experience, knowledge, accomplishment — these may no longer matter. They will come roaring out of the left proclaiming a hatred of all things Washington, including compromise. The movie had it right. Sarah Palin changed the game.”

If you haven’t seen the movie yet and you are at all interested in our government, it is well worth the two hours.

Tony

Rick Santorum Accuses Fox News of “Shilling” for Mitt Romney!!

Dear Commons Community,

The Huffington Post is reporting that Republican presidential candidate, Rick Santorum,  accused Fox News of “shilling” for Mitt Romney during an interview with Fox’s Brian Kilmeade on Tuesday morning.

“The man has had a ten-to-one money advantage,” Santorum said of Romney on the radio show “Kilmeade & Friends.  “He’s had all the organizational advantage. He has Fox News shilling for him every day — no offense, Brian, but I see it — and yet, he can’t seal the deal because he just doesn’t have the goods to be able to motivate the Republican base and win this election.”

Kilmeade defended his network, saying Romney’s campaign team answered interview requests, and that he had tried to get Santorum on his show for at least three and a half months, with no response.

And I thought that Fox News was an equal shilling opportunity broadcaster and shilling for anything that carried the Republican Party label.

Tony

 

 

Young, Black and Male in America- Join the Debate!

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Times has started an online debate based on the question of why so many young black men are not succeeding in our society.  The introduction says it all:

“The news for young black men is not good: they are disproportionately singled out for discipline in school, they are more likely to be stopped and frisked by New York City police officers, and according to Michelle Alexander in her book, “The New Jim Crow,” nearly one-third of black men are likely to spend time in prison at some point in their lives.

Would pulling back on draconian drug laws or legalizing marijuana be enough to fix this imbalance? What else needs to be done?”

Several insightful opinions have already been expressed:  spend more on schooling,  reform the juvenile justice system,  family support.

Weigh in!!!

Tony