Other Posts on this Topic:
Clint Eastwood Talks to an Empty Chair in Tampa
Romney Advisers on Hotseat Over Chair Debacle
Media Turn Clint Eastwood Every Which Way but Loose
Clint Eastwood Blames Mitt for Stupid Chair Skit
The media, naturally, is furious. They don’t like to see Their Precious One mocked and they also understand the power of mockery -- which is why they keep Stewart and Colbert on such a tight leash. This is why the media has already written 25 stories (5 from Politico) mocking Eastwood.
. . . All I can say in response is: Go to hell you Obama-shilling crybabies. Eastwood showed more grit and honestly in those few minutes than you water carriers have during your entire propaganda-for-the-collective careers.
~ John Nolte on Breitbart
Rattled and bitter that they could not knock the Romney-Ryan ticket off-message, the Obama team and its allies in the blogosphere fixated on Clint Eastwood. Listen, I was there and it was darn weird. But at times it was funny and devastating in its dismissal of the president’s excuses. And in clips and sound bites the day after the live performance, the oddness is diminished and the punch lines seem more biting. In simple terms, the movie icon encapsulated the message of the convention: If someone is doing a bad job, you have to fire him.
Eastwood apparently so annoyed the egomaniacal president that the leader of the Free World felt compelled to hit back via Twitter (“this seat is taken”) at the movie star. Talk about losing your presidential aura. Empty chair = Obama is now a powerful association. Will the chair be in ads?
~ Jennifer Rubin on Washington Post
Was he offended?
"One thing about being president or running for president — if you're easily offended, you should probably choose another profession." Obama said with a smile. He said there would be no effort to counter with a similar stunt at the Democratic National Convention, which opens in Charlotte Tuesday.
"I think we'll be playing this pretty straight," he said.
~ President Obama aboard Air Force One to USA Today
We're all Clint Eastwood fans here in the White House.
~ Senior Adviser David Plouffe on ABC's This Week
You see these excerpts and you think, ‘What’s going on? He’s talking to a chair? What is this? But once you actually watch it you go, ‘Yeah, I get what he’s doing.’ Look, everyone knows Clint is a Republican. He’s 82 years old. He’s old enough where you don’t expect Obama up there, you know? He’s got a right to speak his mind. He didn’t kill with the speech, but I by no means thought it was a huge embarrassment.
~ Actor Ben Affleck on Daily Beast
He was doing an improv. That's an improv; it's ad lib. In an improv, you needed a partner. So he created one for himself. Now look, George Bernard Shaw, the great playwright, was great because he always gave the best lines to the antagonists. Actors know, "I want to play the bad guy; he gets the best lines;" the reason being that the stronger the antagonist, the stronger the protagonist because he's got something to fight against.
What he gave to Barack Obama was, well, not the best lines. It was a couple vulgarities. First of all, "shut up," and then "go blank yourself;" a word we can't utter here, of course, and shouldn't have been uttered there. Certainly, not before the candidate was going to come out and impress us with what a wonderful person he was. The result was that it was ... Let me say this, in my opinion, Obama is incapable of saying "shut up and go blank yourself" in any normal circumstance and is capable, in fact, of uttering much more eloquent and I think proper replies. He was not given that opportunity. The words were put in his mouth. The words were vulgar and worse, they were disrespectful. I mean, I can remember a number of presidential campaigns where presidents who were running for reelection were not treated quite this disrespectfully.
~ James Lipton of The Actor's Studio in a discussion on MSNBC
The Ryans Watch the Chair Skit
Nonsense from Clint Eastwood, anti-people Hollywood actor, in defense of Mitt Romney, the Right's candidate for the U.S. elections.
For friends who know English, if you understand what this guy said, let me know too.
~ Iranian Facebook Post translated from Farsi
Hollywood strongman Clint Eastwood appeared at the Republican National Convention today to support and warm the auditorium for Romney, and he was welcomed with enthusiasm. He excited the crowd with a famous line from Dirty Harry [the Chinese translation for this movie literally means "an urgent arresting order"] and made the audience very high.
~ Translation of the official Chinese Government Statement about Eastwood's Speech
The Chair Responds to Eastwood:
Chair: What did people say when you said you were going to talk to an empty chair?
Eastwood: You're absolutely crazy.
