Posted on 09/10/2008 8:55:55 PM PDT by xDGx
The American Idol candidate
September 10, 2008
By Roger Ebert
I think I might be able to explain some of Sara Palin's appeal. She's the "American Idol" candidate. Consider. What defines an "American Idol" finalist? They're good-looking, work well on television, have a sunny personality, are fierce competitors, and so talented, why, they're darned near the real thing. There's a reason "American Idol" gets such high ratings. People identify with the contestants. They think, Hey, that could almost be me up there on that show!
My feeling is, I don't want to be up there. I want a vice president who is better than me, wiser, well-traveled, has met world leaders, who three months ago had an opinion on Iraq. Someone who doesn't repeat bald-faced lies about earmarks and the Bridge to Nowhere. Someone who doesn't appoint Alaskan politicians to "study" global warming, because, hello! It has been studied. The returns are convincing enough that John McCain and Barack Obama are darned near in agreement.
I would also want someone who didn't make a teeny little sneer when referring to "people who go to the Ivy League." When I was a teen I dreamed of going to Harvard, but my dad, an electrician, told me, "Boy, we don't have the money. Thank your lucky stars you were born in Urbana and can go to the University of Illinois right here in town." So I did, very happily. Although Palin gets laughs when she mentions the "elite" Ivy League, she sure did attend the heck out of college. Five schools in six years. What was that about?
And how can you be her age and never have gone to Europe? My dad had died, my mom was working as a book-keeper and I had a job at the local newspaper when, at 19, I scraped together $240 for a charter flight to Europe. I had Arthur Frommer's $5 a Day under my arm, started in London, even rented a Vespa and drove in the traffic of Rome. A few years later, I was able to send my mom, along with the $15 a Day book.
You don't need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has the money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the country once, on an official tour to Iraq? Sarah Palin's travel record is that of a hopeless provincial.
But some people like that. She's never traveled to Europe, Asia, Africa, South America or Down Under? That makes her like them. She didn't go to Harvard? Good for her! There a lot of hockey moms who haven't seen London, but most of them would probably love to, if they had the dough. And they'd be proud if their kids won a scholarship to Harvard.
Palin is a shallow, chirpy person with those vaguely alarming eyeglasses. Now her fans all want a pair. Remember back when women wore glasses that departed their ears in plastic swoops and swirls? My theory is, anyone who wears glasses that look weird is telling me something I don't want to know.
I trust the American people will see through Palin's facade, and save the Republic in November. The most damning indictment against her is that she considered herself a good choice to be a heartbeat away. That shows bad judgment.
Nice pen, you debonair world traveler you!
And I’ll bet that dorky looking fatass breaks the scale on his “weigh in”.
Gosh, Roger. I wasn’t aware you had spent so much time with her that you could understand her fully. You say it’s important for someone to visit Europe so they can understand foreign relations, yet you make a snap judgement about a candidate without walking two feet in her shoes.
Roger, you’re not even that good a movie reviewer. Shut the f*** up.
Gosh, such sour grapes from an obsessed personality cult builder...
Roger Ebert Should Layoff the Fatty Foods.
ah yes. jabba the critic, munching on frogs and belching his putrefaction. no doubt gene siskel would say that if took dying for him to escape the presence of ebert, it was a good bargain.
a pathetic michael moore wannabe. but at least moore makes something. all ebert does is fart about the accomplishments of others.
Ebert bragging at his whine and cheese party that he was slumming...What an elitst snob!
This guy is complaining about someone else’s glasses?
*pre-1989 Eastern Europe, that is...
>You don’t need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad. You need curiosity and a hunger to see the world. What kind of a person (who has the money) arrives at the age of 44 and has only been out of the country once, on an official tour to Iraq? Sarah Palin’s travel record is that of a hopeless provincial.<
Eat more doughnuts, Ebert. Silly argument for someone who;s occupation is to ‘review movies”.Obama appeared in Iraq for 15 minutes, Israel 45 minutes and Berlin for 4 hours. Yes, he is smarter than the rest of us (sarc). Just because you’re a world-class traveller doesn’t mean you are fit to be president. My parents and friends have to been to 6 continents of 7, and including your 57 states...yet they love their own country unlike you and your ilk.
She’s been to Europe, but that fat a** is too ignorant and shallow to know that.
And Ebert’s “proud” that all he’s done his whole life is eat doughnuts and watch movies for a living?
Beyond the Valley of the Ultra Vixens
'Nuff said.
Maybe us unwashed hayseeds don't want to go slobber all over some socialist paradise. Last time I checked, the office was VP of the United States, not VP of the Frickin' World, you condescending, ivory tower prick
Yup. Proof that those that can’t do criticize.
I bet she doesn’t use his opinions to pick out movies at Blockbusters either! He looks like Andy Warhol
Roger: your analysis was disturbingly shallow and sophomoric.
Besides, Obambi is the American Idol candidate.
Palin is a shallow, chirpy person with those vaguely alarming eyeglasses.
...You don’t need to be a pointy-headed elitist to travel abroad...
but spouting such stupid stuff is evidence that Roger is a “pointy-headed elitist”.
All these creepy liberals that feel the need to jump on the Palin bashing wagon are doing more damage to Obambi with every passing day. Keep it up guys...Sweet meltdown....
I’ve been to europe and asia dozens of times. I’ve had offices in both the US and europe and lived part of the year in europe for many years. Believe me, it is nothing to write home about. I did learn from the experience that most people outside of the US are sheep without much of an education.
The US is by no means perfect, but a far, far better place to live than anywhere that I’ve visited. The opportunities in the US are fantastic. Even a young girl from Alaska with no political connections and no fortune can grow up to be the governor of the largest state of the most powerful country in the world and even become a VP candidate of that country. Try doing that in europe where you are forever a nobody unless you were born into the right family or have friends in high places.
Like Obama is the REAL thing? I say GET REAL. He is a jive talker, a con artist, a pimp. He wants to put everyone in America on welfare.
“Kinda llke the pot calling the kettle black, eh Roger?”
More like the vat calling the kettle black...
“Waitress? Bring me another pitcher of sausage gravy!”
Roger is right. Gov Palin never saw the world nor went to an ivy league college. I must point out to him that the moral hazard schemes, savings and loans scandal, Enron, Worldcom, etc, and the high price of oil caused by speculating activity are schemes hatched, managed and created by ivy league, globe trotting elites. Roger thinks education is the one of the indicators of a person character, but I will argue that morality trumps them all. Teddy Roosevelt once said morality is a valuable component in formal education. Exclude it, and you will end up with an educated menace. America is threatened by educated menaces, just look at all those high cost scandals that keep slamming the US every five years. The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debacle is another brick tied around the taxpayers neck along with the cost of entitlements and global military crusades. Luckily the US still has a 14 trillion GDP to fall back on but keep this up and we will end up as a second rate power not because of Russia or China, but globe trotting traitors educated by ivy league schools crippling our nation from within.
I am so far past humoring Roger Ebert that it isn’t funny.
Get a real job you effing wanker.
Roger Ebert wasn’t nearly so obnoxious when Gene Siskel was still alive. I used to watch “At the Movies” faithfully, and I liked both Siskel and Ebert and enjoyed their movie reviews. After Gene died, both Roger and the show really went downhill.
Obama is well traveled........of course, we paid for it:
“Obama most costly freshman world traveler
First term senator’s charges nearly 45% higher than his classmates”
“WASHINGTON - Barack Obama’s two years in the Senate have taken him around the world, from Russia to Iraq to Kenya - an itinerary more costly to taxpayers than any other senator who took office with him.
The Illinois Democrat’s travels in 2005 and 2006 cost taxpayers nearly $28,000 as he studied nuclear proliferation, AIDS, Middle Eastern violence and more.”
“Obama’s journeys are unusual for such a junior senator, but not for someone thinking of a presidential run someday.”
“The official travel spending figures reported to the government don’t include the cost of flights on military aircraft, which are often used on overseas trips by a congressional delegation. They also omit the staff time and security costs incurred by the U.S. embassies in the countries lawmakers visit.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17165679/
Thanks a lot. Now my monitor's got Dr Pepper all over it.
I haven’t watched Ebert since Siskel died, but I remember that Siskel was usually right, and Ebert was always wrong. Siskel once told Ebert, “You say you like every movie because you just like to see your name on the posters.”
I thought for sure he was talking about Ho-bama...what an idiot.
I thought Ebert was dead.
Number of years ago, R. Emmett Tyrell slammed Ebert for some asinine comment in the "Current Wisdom" section of the American Spectator. I was astonished to see a letter from Ebert a few months later whining because (he claimed) he always had enjoyed the Spectator. Of course it was crap. Ebert just didn't want to lose audience share.
lol!
Seriously, there does seem to be an inferiority complex with some people from Chicago, who trip over themselves trying to prove they are as cosmopolitan as folks from New York or LA. The thing is, I never run into people from London or New York or Stockholm who are as obsessed about pointing out where they have traveled. It’s odd that a woman from Alaska should elicit an almost catty response from a supposedly urbane Chicagoite. Jealousy comes in all shapes, sizes and genders apparently.
Good! We're sure to get the American Idol vote now!
It should be noted that Roger Ebert has recently gone through a lot of surgery for a Cancerous Thyroid gland, had a part of his jaw removed and is now unable to talk.
I met him at at an event shortly before all of this occurred. He was a nice guy and a lot of fun to talk to.
We didn’t talk politics as I was sure it would cause disagreements (me being conservative and all).
In any case, while we can take to task what the guy has wrote (believe me I heartily disagree with it, and I, myself, have thought of Barack Obama as the American Idol candidate and think it is funny for him to call Palin that, oblivious to the better association with Obama)let’s be easy on the guy himself.
I like him, he’s just a product of the Hollywood mindset.
Years ago I learned the hard way that when a movie had “one thumb up” and it was from Roger, it was best to pass.
I don’t seem to agree with him on this either.
And Ed Wood at least had the decency to recognize that he’d never rise above dime store porn.
Okay, Ebert seems like a nice guy. I don’t want to pile on him just because he leans to the left, and doesn’t like Palin.
But going into the bit about her glasses is just STUPID.
And he calls HER shallow?
MORON!
Welcome to the Freep, Roger.
You know it’s passed the point when a nonentity such as Roger Ebert gets column space for his shallow uninformed political opinion on a woman who’s already more of a player than the Hollywood bimbos whose azzes he plants his fat lips on. Actually, it passed the point when the left made the Ebay parody auction of Governor Palin’s baby. But Roger Ebert??!!
Hey Roger, STFU!!
I am going easy on him.
I am well aware of his medical condition and have made no mention of it. It in no way excuses him from being called on the carpet for penning third-rate hit pieces. Anyone who has to stoop to picking on someone’s glasses as being somehow indicative of their sophistication, and thus suitability for office is, to put it politely, an asshat.
Welcome to FR, btw. ;)
I was turned off with Ebert 10 yrs ago. During a UVA film festival where he fielded questions from the audience
proclaimed european voters had far more sophistication
than the average American citizen.
I forgot the context of his topic but at that point it did’nt matter. My repect for Ebert vanished. Since I’ve listened to Michael Medved’s reviews and found them to be closer to my taste in film.
In other words, pretty much anybody.
I miss Gene Siskel.
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