Clint Eastwood - Off his rocker but he still rocks

The reaction to Clint Eastwood's rambling empty chair routine at the GOP Convention seems to have been all over the news networks reflecting our collective sense of humor bypass operation when it comes to politics.

Clint was meant to be neat little warm up act for the Republican party's nominee Mitt Romney; instead he stole the headlines.

Privately some of Romney's aides were said to be furious that Clint had taken the shine off their man's big moment.

Meanwhile Democrats were also jumping on the bandwagon, trying to intimate Clint was the real soul of the Republican party.

Commentator Ted Frier, a former communications director for the Massachusetts Republican Party, wrote in some blog or another. "Clint Eastwood's unscripted sketch in the closing hours of the Republican National Convention in Tampa last night finally managed to say something that was true: The Republican Party is an aging white guy ranting incoherently at an imaginary Barack Obama."

Personally, I was rather glad to see Clint's routine, not because I agreed with its content, but because it was refreshing to see a real unscripted moment after days of men in sharp suits delivering carefully choreographed scripts about how their grandfathers came to America 100 years ago without a shirt on their backs, and worked down the mine and finally got to live the American dream, bought a fridge big enough to bury a body in etc. through honest toil, blah blah (pause to hand out the barf bags).

Clint is probably a better illustration of the American dream. You work until you are 80 plus and somebody shoves you on a stage even though you have lost half of your marbles, for hoped for political gain. This is not wholly accurate. I'm not saying Clint is in the same position as the grey haired old lady with a hunchback who works down my local McDonal's, probably for less than $10 a hour, but hey she gets to see her picture on the employee of the month board every month because she doesn't grunt at the customers.

The Clint Eastwood episode just serves to illustrate how humorless and image conscious the world of politicians and those who feed off them have all become. God forbid that an octogenarian is allowed to mutter and spout off his real thoughts without a makeover by the spin doctors beforehand.

I may not agree with Clint's views but, to my mind he still rocks. He was the man with no name; he made chewing on an old dog end look cool; he was that unremittingly hard dude Dirty Harry, he made a war film from the Japanese perspective and he made Gran Torino. Nuff said.