So I watched this show on HBO all ready for some great schadenfreude. Well, I got what I asked for alright, but man, were they ever rough on ol’ Sarah.
At one point, I was almost feeling sorry for her. But don’t worry, I came back around. 
And yes, I know, the writers took a LOT of artistic license, but still, even if a fraction of that shit was true… Wow… Just wow.
I didn’t see it but, surprisingly enough, the hosts on the conservative AM radio station this morning were saying they enjoyed it and thought it treated her fairly well – not stupid but rather unprepared and mismanaged. After all the grumbling lead-up to it from people on the Right, I expected more negative response. Of course, maybe everyone else was critical of it.
I’ll have to wait for it to be a DVD rental or something. Don’t have HBO but I did read the book.
I feel like the country has been watching the Sarah Palin movie for the last 4 years. I don’t really see the point of making a new version.
Written by Danny Strong. Yeah, Jonathan from Buffy the Vampire Slayer! Awesome.
As a country music fan, I was bothered that they used snippets of Dixie Chicks and Shania Twain as shorthand for “imbecile.” Otherwise, I really enjoyed it. And what a top-drawer cast!
I started watching it, but I fell asleep (not that it was boring, I was just tired); I’m glad I DVR’ed. I think I’ll watch it tonight.
Interestingly, Steve Schmidt was on Morning Joe this morning and when asked how accurate it was, he said it was very accurate.
I read the book, so the movie held no surprises other than placing Mt. McKinley in Palmer, Alaska (the scene when Sarah is at the state fair and gets the call: the state fair is in Palmer, which is a couple hundred miles from Denali). The film reinforces how close we all came to having this egomaniac in the White House once McCain finished his run. Had she been a few degrees more savvy and had another 20 points on the IQ scale, they may have carried it off. Ed Harris did an excellent job as McCain.
It was ok. Very clear which side the writers are on. Much ado about nothing.
MSNBC host Chris Matthews, who knows everyone portrayed in the movie well, has been pushing this movie pretty hard, and said that he has already watched it twice. Rachael Maddow has not mentioned it on her show, but then she has said that she considers the original book very poorly written.
You have to remember every campaign book should be subtitled “It wasn’t my fault, they didn’t listen to me!” He was one of the principal sources for the book, and everything that makes Palin look bad makes him look good. Apparently even the book was not hard enough on Palin so they made up some stuff like Palin not knowing about the axis in WW2 and McCain saying “Find me a women”.
AFAIK, Schmidt isn’t trying to avoid the blame; he’s admitted that the Palin nomination was his idea.
I saw part of it yesterday. I thought the bit where they were prepping her was hilarious. “OK, here’s Germany. They were our principal enemies in World War I and World War II and with Japan and Italy formed the Axis powers in World War II.” Meanwhile, she looks fascinated to learn all of this stuff (for the first time though?) and was taking lots of notes. And I don’t know if it was true, but at one point they asked her about her opinions on evolution and she said that her father was a science teacher, that he showed her fossils and she accepts evolution although she sees God’s hand in it. That seemed reasonable to me.
…and for that he is serving Republican Penance as a political commentator on MSNBC.
I watched it on Saturday night. I was impressed by Julianne Moore and Ed Harris. After the first 40 minutes, I was wondering why people thought this was such a slight to Palin as they hadn’t shown her to be anything but “folksy” up until that point. Then I watched the rest of it…
I can see how the Palin camp wants to distance themselves from the film. She is portrayed as relentlessly ambitious but woefully unprepared for the national spotlight. I was expecting it to show her as a complete idiot, ala Tina Fey. Instead, it showed the lengths that she went to in order to prepare as best as possible for the job. She may have been ignorant of a number of aspects of foreign policy, current events and how the federal government runs, but she showed she could easily learn (or at least memorize) the salient points.
Isn’t that pretty much the prevailing theory in the first place?
No, the prevailing theory was something along the lines of Joe the mauve sofa.
Yes. Unless you think she was a good candidate who was treated unfairly, it’s hard to come up with any other theory. I haven’t seen the movie, but I read a few reviews, and one of them pointed out that she was not just plucked from obscurity. She’s spent some time courting Republican insiders so they would consider her for a potential VP spot in 2008, and it worked.
It also showed her to be emotionally and mentally unstable as well as petty and vindictive.
She was running as vice president of the United States, not doing a history or civics report. Foreign policy, current events, and how the federal government runs are sort of the bare basic qualifications for the job, I’d hope.
I’m really surprised they were so easy on her. Schmidt comes off as the real idiot IMHO. What a dolt for not doing more background checks on the biggest embarrasment to hit the national spotlight.
Harris, Moore, and Harrleson were all pretty good.
The ads I saw featured an actress playing Palin, and two old bald guys. One of the bald guys was clearly McCain; who was the other?
McCain’s campaign manager Schmidt, played by Woody Harrelson.
Schmidt is on MSNBC’s prime-time line-up constantly. During the “Super Tuesday” primaries, he was there as the Republican voice all evening long, with Rachel Maddow, Chris Matthews, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O’Donnell and Al Sharpton. I suppose after a fuck-up like choosing Sarah, he was pretty much never going to get another job as a Republican campaign manager.