GOP poster boy, Clint Eastwood, takes a cheap shot at Obama; Dirty Harry's family values

Forget all the preposterous spin, claimed by Rachel Maddow, et al., about Clint Eastwood's "bizarre" convention turn, speaking to an empty chair.
     It wasn't bizarre at all. It was perfectly comprehensible theatrical device occasionally used even in (bad) journalism to rip scoundrels who won't give them interview to the reporters who expose them for what they are.
     Miss Maddow, who is usually quite credible because (unlike Bill O'Reilly) she does her homework, apparently thought her audience couldn't hear, via television and the Internet, the way Republican conventioneers ate up Eastwood's cheap (but funny) shot at Obama. ("Romney can't do that to himself... I can't do that to myself, either...")
     The 82-year-old may have bobbled the message, but it still came through loud and clear: no one was confused, no one was scratching their head and no quizzical murmurs were heard from the crowd.
     Really, Rachel.


     The real significance of a spotlight on Clint Eastwood was that it was a spotlight on the hypocrisy of the GOP's family values platform.
     As an artist, Clint Eastwood is a mixed bag, the auteur of superlative films like Grand Torino, Pale Rider, Letters From Iwo Jima, Miracle Baby, and other mature and admirable examinations of the human condition that are light years from the five socially corrosive, pandering-to-redneck-vigilanteism, Dirty Harry installments. (You won't need a PhD to guess from which body of work he trotted out "Make My Day," the phrase that fired up the GOP audience.)
     As a family man Eastwood isn't a mixed bag at all — he's a total train wreck; a serial womanizer and evidently a very casual user of protection. Married twice, he is the father of at least seven children by five women. He didn't publicly acknowledge the first of his children for 32 years. Wikipedia notes that biographer and friend Paul Lippman indicated that Eastwood was particularly promiscuous in the 1970s, having purchased the Hog's Breath Inn in Carmel, near his apartment, to meet young ladies for "nooners" and "five in the afternooners."During the first four of the 14 years he shacked up with Sandra Locke, she had two abortions and a tubal ligation.

     Tellingly, during those fourteen years, Locke never divorced her gay husband, Gordon Anderson.Small wonder, given the impressions her book, The Good, The Bad, and the Very Ugly, had on Amazon.com reviewers:

...Locke paints a truly terrifying, creepy portrait of Mr. Eastwood, the American hero who is apparently a self-centered, manipulative, sociopathic control freak...

...I ended up disliking Clint Eastwood and liking her. Although the relationship was over, she had the courage to try and leave it on a more positive note and to resolve things. She grabbed at one olive branch he proffered between lawsuits, unable to see the hidden thorns... However, I found that the true star of the book was Gordon Anderson. He was depicted as quirky, unique, spiritual, kind, understanding and strong - what a contrast to Clint's true nature...I wanted to read more about him, less about the narcissistic Eastwood...