Wednesday, January 23, 2008

SCOTUS and Hillary: The Movie


Just in time to coincide with what's turn into our weeklong critique on the theatre of the absurd known as the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election, there's news out of the Supreme Court that Citizen's United, a conservative advocacy group, is seeking an expidited review of a recent D.C. Court of Appeals decision in the Supreme Court. The group has put together a film called Hillary: The Movie, which tries to explain all the reasons why Hillary Clinton is not fit for President. Rumor is that if Obama wins the nomination, another film is in production.

The legal question here is whether campaign finance laws apply to promotional ads for this kind of film. Clearly, if the race comes down to Hillary versus the Republican nominee, that nominee will benefit from the film. Of course, there have been a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle political movies in the last few years, from SiCKO (never sure how to spell that), to Bowling for Columbine, and even an Inconvenient Truth, so how the Supreme Court decides this case could have broad ramifications. But, aside from that, this kind of film raise some pretty serious questions about our electoral process. As others have said on this blog in more artful ways, we've reached a point where ideas and policy don't matter.

What seems to matter is which candidate is willing cut deepest in Slanderfest '08, both now during the primaries and later in the general election. You've got Clinton and Obama slugging it out over who has the most experience while our boy John Edwards is actually putting some ideas forward. On the other side, there's a race to see who would kick out the most illegals, kill the most terrorists, and cut the most taxes. And all of it boils down to a growing cabal of personality cults. It's no longer what we believe in so much as who's side we're on.

And that's the deal with this movie. It's about hatred of a person, not the person's ideas. All legal questions aside, it represents an approach to politics that we must reject. The best possible outcome with Hillary: The Movie? Total box office flop, with terrible critical reviews.

2 comments:

Jack Gonzo, MD said...

The difference I think would come down to the fact that this movie is directly aimed at one candidate as where SiCkO and Inconvenient Truth are more about policy then one specific person.

Noodle said...

Ugh what a greate Hillary pic..