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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

Salute A Woman In The Morning:
Not Quite “Morning in America”
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 3/5/08

Meathead made a commercial. Meathead hasn’t scored in a while, and has recycled some out-takes from his long-past cinematic ripostes, into a pastiche for Hillary that has gotten attention from the media, now declaring in a news alert: Hollywood is now in the political ad business!
 
This ad is a barometer, a windsock, a tattletale of the pale in which the dems are stuck.  The ad of Jack Nicholson braying as a mad colonel, in the Marines of course, in “A Few Good Men” who is an incarnation of misogyny as ever in the movies, reveals much. The missing element is the realization – perhaps to be noted by the media [har har] or talk radio [more likely] – that the good colonel is trying to intimidate the lovely lady in sexy white Navy uniform.  The petite lt. Commander/legal beagle is the target of thinly veiled verbal threats, to derail her determined investigation of an errant military ‘code red’ on the base which led to an enlisted Marine’s death.

Adding The Joker – another psychotic character so beloved by Nicholson – is an additional indication of how weird is Hillary, and the depths to which she is going to whack Bo Gesture in time to keep herself in the race.
 
For us on the right, it’s as much fun to watch as a cockfight – one in the mud, feathers flying and pretensions of fairness and unifying rhetoric added to the airborne elements. Hillary complaining of media unfairness is too rich to add my comments – more able commentators have laughed that one into memorable synapses.
 
But the Smiling Jack, eager to Salute A Woman In The Morning, is hardly the symbol a thinking-woman’s campaign of careful thought and strategic consideration would have engaged as a serious symbol of her liberation. The Colonel is not a good symbol either – and let’s hope talk radio, and cable TV [listening, O’Reilly and Sean?] will add the edited [bowdlerized?] parts which straddle those snippets. All of Jack’s characters are certifiable loons – one a cartoon, another a caricature the left believes about military professionals. That Hillary so blithely, and blindly, adheres her campaign’s fortunes to such connections is evidence of the sickness that is the left.  
 
After all, Jack said to the audience he ‘approved’ the ad! Like he was the candidate – as if he were obliged to meet the campaign finance law requirements like a real candidate. It was cute, but also a Rorschach test, a showing of the belief that editing out the surrounding frames of psychosis for those Nicholson portrayals made us forget who these monsters are.  What next: Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter shown in his more ‘civilized’ out-takes?  “Magnolia” clips of Tom Cruise’s bravura performance as a showbiz misogynist with a stagecraft flare? The list is endless, as the films of psychotics are an endless product of Hollywood.  
 
This ad ain’t Morning in America, a la Reagan’s theme; but maybe Mourning of America, should this crowd get power. But the thought of saluting a woman in the morning? Aside from personal fantasies, it would be workable for the nation’s Oval occupants – staff and assistants – if that woman, whether in uniform or mufti – were someone of the nature of Maggie Thatcher, or Jean Kirkpatrick, or Lynne Cheney.
 
Or Elizabeth Dole. Add to the list a long litany of conservative women whose qualities would elicit a salute in a new yawk microsecond. But salute Hillary?
 
The salute in the morning, to avoid our mourning of America, is going to go to a man who mastered the salute – not an actor, and can’t play one on TV very well – long years ago, in actual uniform which for Nicholson, and Meathead, and Hillary, and O-man, is a mere stage fantasy.  He may never wear white as a civilian, but the ads for him will not be a smirking smile of a faux colonel, eagle on the collar, but of a retired Navy captain, once with the real eagle on his real collar. Issued not by the stagemaster’s prop department, but by the U.S. Navy itself.
 
Mac may be flawed – much said here many times in many ways on that concern – but he’s the Real Deal, no phony Meathead visions. He will be an adult in the Oval; the DNC nominee will bring us another four [or eight?] years of Oval teens, who think Nicholson’s military man is the real thing.  Our Mac’s Oval Team will be adults, who know how to salute, who need no practice, and are not embarrassed by that act. Or wearing a lapel pin of the American Flag. Nor proud the first time in their lives of this Shining City on a Hill.
 
Which all the Nicholsons in all the world over the entire history of Hollywood will never understand. Meathead made a movie with opening-title respect for Marine drill teams, but its totality was abysmal. That he made this ad as a proud statement of his view, and Nicholson put his imprimatur on it with his ‘closing’ reminder, shows more than Hillary intended.
 
Which do we want: Mac’s Oval Team, or their Oval Teens? This ad gives a hint of what lies over the event-horizon of this election. ExileStreet

copyright 2008 Steve Finefrock

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