I grabbed this from Wikipedia:
Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime is a book by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin about the 2008 United States presidential election.[1] Released on January 11, 2010,[2] it was also published in the United Kingdom under the title Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House.[3] The book is based on interviews with more than 300 people involved in the campaign.[4] It discusses factors including Democratic Party presidential candidate John Edwards’s extramarital affair, the relationship between Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his vice presidential running mate Joe Biden, failure of Republican Party candidate Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign and Sarah Palin’s vice presidential candidacy.[1][4][5][6]
The book is divided into three parts. Part 1 consists of the first fourteen chapters and is about the Democratic primary race between Obama and Clinton as well as the Edwards affair. Part 2 covers the next three chapters and is about the Republican primary race. Part 3′s final six chapters describe the fall campaign between Obama and John McCain.
The book is 23 chapters long and is supposed to be the story of how Barack Obama became president. The movie is a couple hours long and is all about Sarah Palin. The movie credits don’t even list someone playing Obama, but they do list someone playing Sarah’s stylist.
Moore plays the former governor of Alaska in the upcoming HBO film “Game Change,” which chronicles the ups and downs of then-GOP presidential nominee John McCain’s 2008 campaign for president. Based on the book by journalists Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, the film is less than flattering to Palin, who is seen flailing and rebelling against those running the campaign.
“We have her displaying moments of sheer brilliance –- I mean, she was unbelievably charismatic,” Moore said earlier in January about the film’s portrayal of Palin. “Suddenly here was this working class mother who popped out and seemed to be able to command the world, but of course upon further inspection, she was clearly not prepared. She didn’t necessarily have the experience necessary to lead our country, and that’s what we were attempting to characterize.”
Of course the key moments of that characterization are based on the word of a couple of McCain staffers who have made something of a secondary career out of sliming Sarah. Let’s jump into the Wayback Machine for a few moments:
In the summer of 2008 Sarah Palin was 44 years old and was midway through her second year as governor of Alaska. She ran successfully for Wasilla City council at age 27, was elected mayor at age 31, ran for lieutenant governor at age 37 (coming in second in a 5-way race) and in 2003 at age 38 she was appointed Chairwoman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.
In 2006 she ran for governor, first defeating incumbent Frank Murkowski in the GOP primary and then defeating former Democratic Governor Tony Knowles in the general. She did it while being heavily outspent in both races and in a year that saw a Democratic tidal wave in federal and state races across the nation. Not too shabby for someone without money or family political connections.
During her first year and a half as governor Sarah was very popular, with approval ratings ranging from 64% to 93%, depending on which polls you look at. Unlike Obama she spent her time doing her job, not running for another office. She did find time to get pregnant and give birth to her fifth child, however.
Many people feel that Sarah Palin lacked the experience necessary to lead our country. That is a reasonable argument, but on the other hand she didn’t run for president, she was selected to be the vice-presidential nominee.
As might be expected from someone who had never held or run for national office before Sarah did not possess a detailed knowledge of U.S. foreign policy when she was first nominated. She also had very little experience in dealing with a hostile press.
That was about to change. Here is an overview of what took place when Sarah was first nominated. She was a game changer, that’s for sure.
(click to enlarge)
From what we can see from the HBO trailer we can expect the movie to portray Sarah Palin as incompetent and on the verge of a meltdown. It should be pointed out that this movie began production last year and was planned for release in March 2012, right in the middle of the primary season. When production began it was widely believed that Sarah would be running for president right now.
But this movie is not merely a dramatization of what we saw during the 2008 campaign. This movie uses a actress giving an excellent impersonation of Sarah Palin behaving in ways that were never captured on film during the campaign and that are completely at odds with what we saw at the time.
They blur the line between truth and fiction in a way that can literally alter your mind. Remember when Sarah Palin said she could see Russia from her house? The problem is she never said that, Tina Fey said it. But there are still people who think Sarah said it. How many HBO viewers will realize when the movie departs from reality and enters fantasy land?
It looks like Sarah, it sounds like Sarah, and some of the scenes (like her GOP convention speech) match our memories. Then we see “Sarah” confused about whether Africa is a continent or a country, or curled in the fetal position. We never saw the real Sarah do that, but our memory now depicts it.
This movie is propaganda. Don’t be surprised to see it playing prominently during one of those “free weekends” where all cable and dish subscribers can watch HBO for free.
This is, after all, the network that employs he who shall remain nameless.
Filed under: Palinpalooza, Sarah Palin Tagged: | Palinpalooza, Sarah Palin
If anyone wants to really know about Sarah Palin’s record, they should watch The Undefeated.
Game Changer was made for people who want to watch Julianne Moore reprise Tina Fey’s comic impression of Sarah Palin minus any comedy.
I love the meme that Sarah Palin cost John McCain the election.
If that were true, then Obama is a loser who never should have been nominated.
Oh, wait . . . he is a loser who never should have been nominated.
But seriously, does anyone believe that McCain would have won if he had nominated Tim Pawlenty or Mitch Daniels?
Throughout history women have had their true stories altered and made to fit the narrative that men prefer. From Mary Magdalene to Marie Antoinette.Why should we expect anything different for Sarah Palin? A hundred years from now she’ll be a woman who worked her way through college as a prostitute, stole money from the Republican Party to spend thousands of dollars on clothes, pretended to give birth to her daughter’s illegitimate child, and flew around Alaska to go to satanic cult meetings at the taxpayers expense.
Would be funny if it wasn’t that many already believe this to be the truth.
This post by Violet Socks comes to mind, about how Bonnie (of Bonnie and Clyde fame) is now depicted – by a male author – as having been … a prostitute. With no facts to back up his claim except, well, she could have been !
That’s a good one and very relevant to this discussion. I’ve posted about it at the P&L Facebook fanpage of anyone wants to discuss it further.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Peacocks-Lilies/290728884306528
As I recall that wasn’t a factor at any point during the election. But of course gossip sells (books as well as movies), so by all means …
Sure, not only a mother, snort, but working class at that, who “popped” out. Really? “Further inspection”? “Clearly not prepared”? “Didn’t have the experience”? “Lead our country”?
Julianne Moore, sweetie, do yourself – and us – a favour: Stick to acting and keep your mouth shut about things you clearly know nothing about except for what you’ve been “bamboozled” and “okey-doked” into believing. Goes for your Hollywood colleagues too.
OT
Mitt is not even waiting until the general to turn into an OWS bogeyman:
http://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/01/mitt-romney-middle-income-americans-are-focus-not-very-poor/
The media (Hollywood) and the REP establishment have done everything they can to vilify Sarah Palin and her family but after poring over thousands of emails (24,000+ pages of emails) from Sarah Palin’s term as governor, even the mainstream media has been forced to concede that Sarah Palin was a conscientious, transparent, and effective public servant.
Don’t know who they think will want to watch this film. Those who support her won’t because of the negative portrayal, those who despise her won’t because they despise her.
I really don’t like the celebrity we have in this country. Actors become these personalities that are larger than life and then when they make a movie, their celebrity is so big, it’s takes over their acting and dominates. Now we have Julianne Moore playing Tina Fey and the whole story is completely lost. Too much celebrity, too much canned stereotypes. It’s sloppy story telling and it’s bad acting.
I think drama and acting have gone the way of journalism. Nobody respects the integrity of the jobs anymore. Remember when people would actually research the story and really study the characters they were going to be playing?
A female governor, who got the citizens of her state checks from oil companies, followed the law on abortion, even if she privately disagreed, outed corruption in her own party OH THE HORROR .
How could she think she could be on a ticket to run the country?????
In 2008 many democrats who had been discarded by their party voted republican for the first time. I am willing to bet the fact that Sarah was on the ticket made it a lot easier to do so.
If John McCain had half the fight that Sarah does, he would be president. It was almost like he was playing a role and not really serious about winning.
Sarah scares the hell out of the “good old boys club”.
Hillary at one time did the same, but then after losing so much blood from the knives in her back, she started working for them instead of against them.
Obama was just talking about his latest scheme for extorting money.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-02-01/obama-plans-assistance-for-rentals-mortgage-refinancing.html
Among other things, he wants to turn foreclosed houses into rentals.
so who gets the rent money???
accorn or the owies???
does it go into his private account???
do the taxpayers pay the rent???
can the people who lost them, now rent them on our money???
All I’m sure of is that B0 & his buds will get a cut.
I believe that Val Jarrett has a lot of experience renting out slums, er, Rezkondos, er, stolen property, damn!, I mean private property acquired cheaply with public money that she receives a management fee (wink!wink!) for never setting eyes on, and more public money to improve, which requires more public money after it is condemned ten years later and must be torn down. Oh and she will need some tax abatements as well as some rigged lowball tax evaluations. Your know like in Chicago.
I hope they give Rezko his cut. He deserves it – he taught VarJar & B0 the biz plus he’s ben keeping his mouth shut like a good co-conspirator.
OT: CBO report projections:
Real unemployment now is 10%.
2012 deficit will rise to $1.08 trillion (4th year in a row Obama gave us a trillion dollar deficit)
Unemployment will rise to 8.9% by the end of 2012, and to 9.2% in 2013.
Federal taxes will jump 30% in 2 years.
Not good news, folks.
Aren’t you glad we aren’t in a depression?
Rimshot!
And then you have Mitt Romney on Laura Ingrahm’s radio show a couple of weeks ago stating that the economy is getting better!
Does this guy want to win?
Shouldn’t he be stating, every chance that he gets, that the economy hasn’t improved and that President Obama’s policies are failing?
Is he really the guy who can beat Obama?
Maybe he’s been Bainwashed.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204573704577189520334363222.html
the Koch Brothers are starting to fight back
[...] Dr. Violet Socks’ The Ease with Which Men Imagine Women as Prostitutes and Myiq2xu’s Re-writing Herstory, about the new HBO Sarah Palin [...]
If Romney is the nominee, expect the election to be a snoozefest. You’re gonna have a drastic reduction from the 2008 years. But if Sarah was running, I’d bet that both the rep and dem organisational machine would have tried to neutralise her.
Notice how all the production staff (producers, director, writers) are all male here. I’m not at all surprised to see another group of men butchering and misrepresenting another female biography. Par for the course.
http://peacocksandlilies.com/2012/02/01/parker-palin-on-men-their-tells/
My apologies to you Crawdad. I had originally sourced this incorrectly to Myiq, but I have since edited it to show correct authorship. Thanks to votermom for the heads up.
That’s me, the attribution police. ;P
I love it! That’s a feminist approach to history, dahlink–inclusion.
Great post. And good question. What do we do about openly talking about the “tells” in things like this movie and related books.
Oh, I know. OWS will fix it. Just wait.
It’s all about presentation. When we talk about “the male gaze,” people will just tune out. But when we say that we can tell based on a particular scene the porn habits of the producer, we get people’s attention. We had them at “porn.”
PS: Thanks for the compliment!
This wasn’t an all-male operation.
Many of the stories about Sarah originated from Nicole Wallace, and Julianne Moore (like Tina Fey before her) is obviously okay with the portrayal. One of the disturbing aspects of what happened in 2008 was the way many alleged feminists joined the “all hands on deck” call to go after Sarah.
BTW – If you watch the clip there are a couple spots where Moore says things I can believe Sarah saying, but not the way Moore does.
“I am not your puppet.”
It was an all male creation, Myiq, that’s the distinction. Yes, women play the patriarchy game, too, but men wrote, directed, and funded this one. This is an issue of the male gaze, and its cultural dominance.
So sad to see such blatant propaganda designed to destroy someones life. In the end it will say more about the establishment and their puppets and their shear terror of a charismatic populist. Well, it will to people who pay attention and aren’t zombies.
It’s the worse kind of hollywood hackery. Put all of your effort into appearing like the person and none of your effort into the character of the person. That’s dishonest. That’s immoral.
As an alternative look at Primary Colors.
It was based on the 1992 Clinton campaign but nobody ever claimed it was a true story.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150526411793339&set=a.373273373338.156550.514828338&type=1&theater
So many “true” stories can be spun to make a person look stupid or weird.
One faux-scandal was a report that Sarah’s campaign aides were shocked when she answered her hotel door one morning wearing only a towel.
So imagine – Sarah just got out of the shower and Todd just got in. There is a knock at the door. It’s the aides she works with every day from early in the morning until late in the evening. What should she do?
No matter what she does it will be spun to make her look bad.
It’s like those $400 haircut stories. You’re a presidential/VP candidate and you’re on the road. You need a haircut. Do you:
Now imagine you are the stylist. They didn’t just pick you out of the phone book at random. You own or work for a top salon in your city. You are asked to either clear your calendar or make an after-hours appointment for a housecall. Including travel time, waiting prep and clean-up it will take you at least 2-4 hours. You normally make $100 for a 30 minute wash, rinse and cut at the salon and your calendar stays busy.
So how much would you bill them for your services?
Of course, it’s a hit piece on Palin. Hillary endured much the same thing, repeatedly. The difference is that Hillary rose above her critics and Sarah joined Fox News and became the joke that her opponents always claimed she was. As a woman who struggled with the decision but, in the end, voted for the McCain-Palin ticket, I wonder who Palin would have been had she and McCain won the election.
Sarah was offered a lot of money to do political commentary for FOX. What is the “joke” about that?
(Don’t forget, she is a conservative and doesn’t consider FOX news to be the enemy)
The joke is on the Dem operatives who hounded her out of the Alaskan governorship with bogus ethic complaints. They thought they would bankrupt her with legal fees, instead she ended up earning millions on Fox & with her books.
It’s like watching the coyote trying to get the road runner. Meep! Meep!
Don’t forget they wanted to shut her up in Alaska to “study” before she could be a real politico, Instead, she resigned and led the Tea Party in 2010.
[...] Violet Socks’ The Ease with Which Men Imagine Women as Prostitutes and Myiq2xu’s Crawdad’s Re-writing Herstory, about the new HBO Sarah Palin [...]
The usual suspects have had a pretty easy time of destroying the threat of Palin. It helps that it’s both party machines, the political class pundits and media, and hollywood. When you think about how all of them are working as hard as they have been and churning out the material they do, it’s amazing she still draws a crowd and has followers. Must make heads explode every time she does.
I don’t think this stuff will faze her.she is tough.
The arrogance and sexism Moore displays in her description of Gov. Palin is disturbing. It is just that kind of sexism and belittling of women and our accomplishments that sent this former Yellow Dog Dem away from the Party.
The comments at HuffPo are disturbing, too. They illustrate how successful Ezra Klein and the JournoListers were in their desire to depict Palin in the most negative light possible (they were concerned after her acceptance speech that she might be trouble for Obama). Add to that the blatantly false rumors spread abt her, the lack of remorse or shame by those whose lies were exposed when her emails were released.
Disturbing. Those who continue to claim to be the party of Women continue to act in the most sexist and misogynistic way possible.
I’ve never seen such hatred of women in my life as I’ve seen from the new Dem party and assorted pundits and media on their side in the last 4 years. Quite a wake up.
It truly was. I was appalled as a lifelong Dem to se the Party to which I had been devoted treat Hillary so horribly, to see other women treat her so horribly, the MSM, which seemed to see it was okay for them to have open season on women, then on to Sarah, then Michelle, any strong, powerful woman seemed to become the target of their hatred and ire. Staggering.
I had believed that the Dems did care abt women and other groups, but I now see with new eyes what they really are. Women, like other groups, are pawns. Never again. Firmly Independent now.
Absolutely, votermom – you said it.
I think I’ll stay on that theme:
Maggie Thatcher was but a caricature in Meryl Streep’s head, and probably why the movie tanked. Love or hate her politics, Thatcher was a respected woman of her time. Many reviews pointed out the film only covered some some of her lowlights and some of her “whacky” times.
Remember The Kennedys mini-series ? It was wonderful, but no network or pay cable channel would carry it. Fortunately, a new channel, Reelz, picked it up. I’m a Kennedy fan, and no, didn’t learn anything new, but it was delicious and the acting wasn’t as cartoonish as Juilianne Moore does Sarah. I thought Katie Holmes as Jackie was amazing. Funny, it was made for the History Channel, but Princess Caroline of Kennedy boo-hoo’d it as showing her parents in a negative light. So History determined “… the final product doesn’t quite fit into our programming afterall”. But Pawn Stars does?
LOL.
Pretty cool – Darrel Issa just tweeted this graphic
[...] more Palin tweets here: Rewriting Herstory h121(); Category: 2008, 2012, 2012 Election, 2012 elections, 9/11, ACES, Alaska, America, AP, [...]