published on in News Update

Clint Eastwood yelled at a chair during his speech at the GOP Convention

You know what? I genuinely like Clint Eastwood, and I think he has an amazing, admirable Hollywood career. As for politics… well, he’s always been a Republican. He’s even held public office as a Republican. When I’ve seen him speak about his political views in the past, he often sounds more liberal than most Republicans would like to admit – like, he’s very much what I consider a “California Republican” – more liberal on social issues, and conservative on economic and foreign policy issues. Still, he claims that he’s a die-hard Republican, and so be it.

So, it wasn’t really surprising to me that Clint was invited to this week’s Republican Convention, and given that “Wimp Factor” Newsweek cover, you knew that the convention was going to stress Mitt’s manly-man credibility. So who better to introduce (sort of) Romney than Clint? How in the world could that go wrong?

OH NOES. I mean… was this really that bad? I tried watching it live, and it just made me uncomfortable (because I thought he sounded kind of senile), so I switched the channel. This morning, the news analysts said that the Romney campaign basically gave Clint an option to say whatever he wanted, and that Clint decided to “ad-lib”. The panel on Morning Joe basically said that this was a failure of properly using Clint, and that he shouldn’t have been a final-night speaker. I also think the Republican National Committee needs to fall on their sword a little bit – this really seemed like the most poorly organized convention in recent memory. Usually the GOP runs their convention like a Swiss watch, a model of efficiency and “everyone getting in line” behind the candidate. But this one seemed… I don’t know. Barely anyone mentioned the candidate. No one told Condi about the lipstick on her teeth. Ann Romney’s speech was kind of all over the place. It’s just been weird.

Us Weekly has a story about all of the Twitter-verse going crazy about Clint’s speech – crazy as in bad. Adam Levine tweeted, “Clint Eastwood has gone f—in’ nutterbutters yo.” Olivia Munn wrote: “Clint Eastwood was talking to an empty chair at the RNC. No, that’s not the set up to a joke. It’s not even a joke.” You can read more about it here. Meanwhile, this is what Obama tweeted:

Photos courtesy of WENN, Obama’s Twitter.

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