Much has been made of Clint Eastwood’s bizarre speech wherein the Dirty Harry star spoke at length to an invisible President Obama in what appeared to be an empty chair. It’s hard to deny that Eastwood’s risky choice begged for immediate parody, but the man’s a world cinema scholar and anybody who loves Yojimbo as much as he does can rant at my furniture any day of the week.
Rather than piling on and mocking Eastwood, a conservative who’s expressed some genuinely compassionate, libertarian views, but whose onscreen persona is seldom far away from the “angry white men” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said the Republican party needed to stir up, I’d like to offer a possible explanation. Perhaps Eastwood was simply referencing the great Jimmy Stewart who starred in both the populist political yarn Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Harvey, the beloved story of a man and his giant invisible rabbit.
Probably not, but I’d swear I saw a large-eared shadow following Eastwood off stage.
