Obama Camp: Refer Clint Eastwood Questions To Salvador Dali
Clint Eastwood’s speech at the Republican National Convention may not have been great … ok, it was bizarre by most accounts … but the legendary actor and director has at least earned enough respect to let the rambling and sometimes incoherent speech off as a bit of a senior moment. Right?
Wrong.
The Obama camp couldn’t help but take a dig at Clint Eastwood’s speech, Yahoo! News reported. The Democrats acknowledged that the speech, in which Eastwood addressed an empty chair next to him and appeared to wander far off script, was surreal.
“Referring all questions on this to Salvador Dalí,” spokesman Ben LaBolt said by email.
For those not up on art history, Salvador Dali was a surrealist painter of the 20th century, a man who epitomized surrealism both in his paintings and his bizarre real-life stunts.
Clint Eastwood turned out to be the RNC’s surprise speaker. Until he was announced, there was speculation that the mystery speaker could be anyone from anyone from Herman Cain to Sarah Palin to Colin Powell.
It turned out to be none of those, but instead the 82-year-old actor and director. His speech wasn’t all bad, CBS News noted. It was tough on Obama, funny at times and, as the Romney campaign noted, entirely ad-libbed.
In the 10-minute speech he recalled how Obama supporters cried with optimism in 2008.
“I was even crying. And … I haven’t cried that hard since I found out that there is 23 million unemployed people in this country.”
“Now that is something to cry for because that is a disgrace, a national disgrace, and we haven’t done enough, obviously – this administration hasn’t done enough to cure that,” he said.
Clint Eastwood criticized the president for high unemployment, the war in Afghanistan, and even for being a lawyer.
“When somebody doesn’t do the job, you gotta let `em go,” Eastwood said before making a throat-slashing motion.
But the speech will be remembered most for Eastwood’s decision to address an empty chair as if it were Obama — Salvador Dali-esque indeed.
