The Ultimate Empty Chairs

The reaction to movie icon Clint Eastwood’s “debate” with an unoccupied stool representing President Obama at the Republican convention has, predictably, extended to the faculty lounge. The tenor of the criticism of the “Man with no name,” in turn, suggests that there may be a few empty chairs on college campuses.

The audience in the hall had no trouble understanding the actor-director. Neither, apparently, did viewers in Televisionland, some of whom made Labor Day “National Empty Chair Day.”

Nevertheless, scholars are still scratching their heads over Eastwood one-liners like:

• “Of course we all know Biden is the intellect of the Democratic party.  Kind of a grin with a body behind it.”
• “I would just like to say something, ladies and gentlemen. Something that I think is very important. It is that, you, we— we own this country. We— we own it. It is not you owning it, and not politicians owning it. Politicians are employees of ours.”
• “We don’t have to be – what I’m saying, we do not have to be mental masochists and vote for somebody that we don’t really even want in office just because they seem to be nice guys or maybe not so nice guys, if you look at some of the recent ads going out there.”

Martin Kich, an English professor at Wright State in Ohio,  nicely summarized the reaction of elites, academic and otherwise, to Eastwood’s remarks: “Much of the negative criticism of Clint Eastwood’s speech at the GOP convention has centered on one of three things:

“(1) because it was delivered just ahead of Romney’s acceptance speech and because it created such a sensation, it overshadowed Romney’s speech instead of more proportionately providing a dramatic lead into it;

“(2) because it was so seemingly unrehearsed, so extemporaneous, it seemed rambling and even incoherent, diffusing a great deal of the point that it seemed intended to make; and

“ (3) it made a very highly regarded and seemingly ageless director and actor seem suddenly in his ‘dotage,’ reducing him not just to the level of a political hack but to the level of a political caricature–or, if you will, a buffoon.”

In his essay on the academe blog maintained by the American Association of University Professors, Kich added, “I think that all of these criticisms are very warranted.”

As Sgt. Tom “Gunny” Highway, one of Eastwood’s screen incarnations, once memorably noted, “With all due respect, sir, you are beginning to bore the hell out of me.”

Kurt Schlichter on Breitbart.com may have come closer to an accurate assessment when he noted, “If the liberal media elite ever watched any popular entertainment instead of lame art films about frustrated college professors that close with the word ‘Fin,’ they might recognize that Eastwood fits right into the American pop cultural image of the wacky but wise uncle who always gets the best lines – and whose advice the young hero always seeks out and finds true.”

As to speculation about whether the former mayor of Carmel, California knew what he was doing, it is worth noting that he has been acting since 1955 and directing films since 1971. What are the odds that he didn’t know how his speech would play in Middle America?

Moreover, only in the last 25 years or so of a career that spanned more than a half century has he achieved anything resembling critical acclaim. Before that, he mostly received critics’ disdain. For example, in his 1968 New York Times review of Coogan’s Bluff, Vincent Canby claimed, “If James Dean had lived to grow a few inches taller and to attain a lean, graceful, movie middle-age (anything from his late 20’s to his 60’s), and if he had been tranquilized beyond all emotion, the result would have been Clint Eastwood, one of the movie phenomena of today.”

Meanwhile, general audiences made Eastwood rich and famous and his character’s signature lines national catchphrases.

They made his day.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.

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