I watched Maddow after Eastwood’s speech to see the leftie reaction. Maddow was stunned, and could only stammer insults at Clint. Clint killed the lefties, but apparently there are a few fools here on FR who believe the Maddow version.
What Eastwood did was a stroke of genius, and I think what happened is that it induced a sort of “delayed reaction” on the part of a lot of people.
We have become accustomed to the polished speeches of our politicians, the polished writings of our newspaper pundits, and the slithering talk of our electronic media shills. The first reaction among a lot of us was “Who put this 82-year-old doddering old fellow up there?” (Our media society also does not like oldsters).
A number of people have commented that his presentation reminded them of the fine actor (and BTW, USAF Brigadier General I believe) Jimmy Stewart in “Harvey”. He’s not a politician, although he has been involved, but rather a very good actor. Stewart had a way of acting to deceive people until all of a sudden, you realize where he was going.
My wife has been a diplomat at various times. She commented that the art of diplomacy is in putting the knife between the ribs (figuratively of course) so delicately that your opponent doesn’t realize it is there until it’s too late.
That’s what Mr Eastwood just did to Obama.