Clint Eastwood's speech

I awoke this morning to being told that Clint Eastwood had given a speech at the Republican National Convention. I had read yesterday that he was the most likely candidate for the "surprise speaker", so I wasn't at all shocked to hear that he had spoken at the convention. What I didn't expect to hear was that his speech was bizarre; I took the time to watch all twelve minutes of Eastwood's speech and found myself cringing for most of the way through it. Besides being bizarre, I found it disappointing and upsetting.

Normally, I would have found the content in his speech offensive and it would have angered me; I certainly don't condone anything that he said (I am beyond tired of blatant disrespect/outright rudeness directed at President Barack Obama - there is a difference between legitimate criticism and pure insult, and that applies to any politician of any political party), but in his case it was difficult for me to be angry: for one thing, his entire demeanor came across as tired, worn-out and somewhat incoherent, which I found sad because I've always observed Eastwood to be highly energetic and comprehensible with a fine speaking voice. I appreciate that he is elderly and doesn't have the stamina he once had, but even so, seeing him that way was awful. Then he started arguing with/talking to an "invisible" (pretend) Obama, and again, under other circumstances what he said would have made me furious, but it was hard for me to feel anything but sympathy for him as he talked to a person who wasn't there and appeared to have difficulty in his delivery.

In regards to his actual content, I didn't ever expect Eastwood to stoop to the level of being blatantly disrespectful towards President Obama. I knew he wasn't a supporter and wasn't going to vote for the president, but until that point I had always witnessed him being reasonable in his praise or criticism of other people: I didn't think he'd say the things he said in that speech. If Eastwood had just made a few nice comments about the Republican nominee and given some fair and polite criticism to Obama I wouldn't have thought anything more about it and wouldn't be writing this post, but the sheer disrespect he displayed in his speech was extremely disappointing and the sort of behavior I figured he was above. I really am not sure what Eastwood was trying to achieve with his speech; it was completely out of character for him.

Looking at the news, I'm not the only one both disappointed and/or upset by Eastwood's performance, and there are people on all sides of the political spectrum who share my feelings. I'll be interested in Eastwood's follow-up, if he does one.