Thursday, December 28, 2006

Hollywood's Bias: Stupid or Evil

Toby Harnden, writing in the British newspaper The Telegraph, notes a bias that most Americans have spotted for years:

Have you noticed how Republicans are always portrayed by comedians as stupid? Remember Spitting Image's Ronald Reagan - "The President's Brain is Missing"? Democrats are never stupid. Thus we have Carter (clever but ineffectual), Bill Clinton (clever but over-sexed), Al Gore (clever but tedious), John Kerry (clever but vain), Howard Dean (clever but unhinged) and Hillary Clinton (clever but cold).

Come to think of it, with Republicans it's stupid or evil - Nixon (evil), Ford (stupid), Reagan (stupid), Bush Snr (stupid), Bush Jnr (stupid and evil). Chase is on record as calling George W. Bush worse than stupid - a "dumb f----" who "started a jihad", an "uneducated, real lying schmuck". So as he goes to his maker maybe poor old Jerry Ford should be grateful he only got saddled with being stupid. And whatever one's politics, those Chevy Chase sketches were pretty damn funny.

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