It’s not too surprising that the network that airs Real Time with Bill Maher would not have a very high opinion about John McCain and Sarah Palin. And it was hard not to make fun of Sarah Palin while she was running for Vice President of the United States of America. Still, it was pretty amazing that Sarah Palin got the nomination when even a short chat with the woman would show she was as dumb as a bag of hammers. With apologies to bags of hammers everywhere.
I’m not as interested in politics as I once was. I have come the conclusion that they are all nasty bits of work and we should toss out that whole Representative Government idea and just go with Mob Rule using whatever is trending the most on Twitter. But that’s just me.
So in Game Change we find Senator John McCain is a lily liveried, weak willed, old man who refuses to confront the much more dominate, if far less intelligent, Sarah Palin. For all her missteps and odd turns of phrase, Sarah Palin does have a bit of star power. She still makes occasional appearance now and then, but no one really pays her that much attention. When she was running for office with John McCain, she got all kinds of attention.
I was surprised by the fact that I found myself feeling sorry for Sarah, someone tossed in the deep end while holding an anchor. We see shots of Sarah watching TV and being humiliated by everyone making fun of her. At the same time, we see her refusing adamantly to listen to any of her advisers and following her own instincts.
It’s hard to believe that the real Sarah Palin was as dumb as she was portrayed here. At one point they are telling her that Germany was the bad guy in WWII and she is making a note of it. Really? Is there anyone who doesn’t know the Nazis were the bad guys? It appears that person would be Sarah Palin. She also didn’t know that the Prime Minister is the head of Government in England or why we went to war with Iraq. To be fair, a slightly dim co-worker also didn’t know about that whole PM thing and he also thought we invaded Iraq because Saddam Hussein attacked us on 9/11. Really? I mean, REALLY?
Game Change is told from the point of view of one of John McCain’s advisers, who suggests Sarah Palin and then regrets that suggestion. He never asked her any questions that might have sent up a red flag that she was not quit up to the task of being second in line to the Presidency. The more McCain’s people learn about Sarah Palin, the worst it gets. But amazingly, Sarah has a few shining moments where she doesn’t look like a 6th grade drop-out.
I found that I liked Sarah Palin’s wanton naïveté about campaigning and how she wanted to go to States where they didn’t have a chance of winning to see if she get a few votes. If only we had a system where individual votes counted, it might have been a good idea.
Game Change was a lot of fun and Ed Harris, Julianne Moore, and Woody Harrelson gave great performances as slightly larger than life life characters.
