Aunt Bee and Big Al say vote McCain!

October 23, 2008 10:51 AM

Okay, this election is officially weird. Opie, Andy, Richie and the Fonz apparently want us to vote Obama. Sadly, it's missing the kind of catchy songs featured in Fonzie's other PSA (NSFW).
posted by miss lynnster (55 comments total)

THE VIDEO WHERE RON HOWARD TAKES HIS TOP OFF, you mean.

rowr!

This is pretty nuts, miss lynnster. This one's funny, too.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 11:02 AM on October 23, 2008

If weird = awesome, then I agree.
posted by not_on_display at 11:06 AM on October 23, 2008

I like this one.
posted by Caduceus at 11:06 AM on October 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

That was surprisingly awesome.
posted by interrobang at 11:13 AM on October 23, 2008

I remember when I first learned James Stewart was not only a Republican -- he was actually a real John Birch right winger type. It was life discovering that Santa Claus was actually just your father in a red suit, and when he was done, he was going down stairs and hammer the fuck out of your mom in a drunken, angry rage.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 11:13 AM on October 23, 2008 [12 favorites]

In related news, the financial crisis is now officially weird, too: Padmé and that brunette from The Office give us their advice.
posted by not_on_display at 11:14 AM on October 23, 2008

The "want us to vote Obama" link, I mean.
posted by interrobang at 11:15 AM on October 23, 2008

"What Michael and George Michael didn't know was that at that moment, Tobias was getting ready for what he thought was an audition for an advertisement for Canadian french fry manufacturer McCain Foods."
posted by Shepherd at 11:17 AM on October 23, 2008 [11 favorites]

Am I the only one who thinks Henry Winkler had gotten cooler as he's aged? I mean, have you seen him of Craig Ferguson's show? HILARIOUS.
posted by Astro Zombie at 11:17 AM on October 23, 2008

Okay, this election is officially weird.

You have a pretty high weirdness threshold.
posted by googly at 11:19 AM on October 23, 2008 [3 favorites]

In related news, the financial crisis is now officially weird, too: Padmé and that brunette from The Office give us their advice.

Huh. That was really weird.

I like Rashida Jones. I hope she gets more work in good shows.
posted by Caduceus at 11:20 AM on October 23, 2008

You have a pretty high weirdness threshold.

Why yes, yes I do.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:23 AM on October 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

I liked Hayden Panettiere PSA: Vote for McCain. This PSA is just as enjoyable as her last one.
posted by chunking express at 11:25 AM on October 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

I did it first. (warning: self link) Stealing my idea of cutting his hair on camera!
posted by cjorgensen at 11:35 AM on October 23, 2008

I really liked that. I wish Ronnie had also gotten Nancy Morgan, and channeled the power of the best movie ever made.

Mrs. C could have come, too.
posted by dirtdirt at 11:44 AM on October 23, 2008

This one's funny, too.

Like McCain would care if the Constitution were in danger.
posted by kirkaracha at 11:45 AM on October 23, 2008

She was right about the thirty seconds thing.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 11:46 AM on October 23, 2008

That was really great.

However, I'm embarrassed that I forgot that Andy Griffith is still alive. I was watching and thinking, wow, they really edited in that old footage of Andy nicely.
posted by yhbc at 11:46 AM on October 23, 2008 [7 favorites]

However, I'm embarrassed that I forgot that Andy Griffith is still alive. I was watching and thinking, wow, they really edited in that old footage of Andy nicely.
Ditto Henry Winkler.
posted by SPUTNIK at 11:49 AM on October 23, 2008

I liked Hayden Panettiere PSA: Vote for McCain. This PSA is just as enjoyable as her last one.

Save the cheerleader, save the world.
posted by mandal at 11:50 AM on October 23, 2008

yhbc - Glad to see I wasn't the only one.
posted by WinnipegDragon at 11:51 AM on October 23, 2008

Very awesome indeed, miss lynnster.

Years ago when I was on the celebrity junket circuit, I "did" Ron Howard and his interview was useless. He was utterly charming, self-deprecating, cool, gracious, ready to parry even the silliest or most impertinent questions - he was a hell of a lot more delightful than the stars he was directing. Since I was producing agency copy for the Charybdis and Scylla of the UK Press (the Daily Express and the Daily Mail), and they only wanted celebrity stuff with a rather nasty edge, I couldn't quote him at all!
posted by Jody Tresidder at 12:00 PM on October 23, 2008 [4 favorites]

As silly as this video may seem, I think things like this, in a cumulative sense, go a long way in pushing soft voters to one side. I'm sure there are a lot of people thinking that Bush sucks and they kind of like Obama, but aren't sure whether to vote for him. Then you have all these stories of respectable (Colin Powell) and well-known (Ron Howard, Andy Griffith) people, including a number of former conservatives (the Goldwater granddaughters, Ike's daughter, former Minnesota Governor, etc.) deciding to vote for Obama because of his "transformative" candidacy or whatever. Nobody is swayed anymore by what Bruce Springsteen thinks, but Andy Griffith? Dean Smith? Ralph Stanley? All those people sort of combine to create this image that normal, reasonable people, including normal, reasonable, old, white people are all voting for the black guy with the funny name. It's also sort of the natural counter to the "terrorist Muslim scary radical liberal" screed that we hear so regularly from the right.
posted by billysumday at 12:04 PM on October 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

I'm still shocked Alice Cooper is a die hard Republican and Jesus freak.
posted by dasheekeejones at 12:06 PM on October 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

I remember when I first learned James Stewart was not only a Republican -- he was actually a real John Birch right winger type.

I know what you mean, but if you really think about it, it's not surprising. Frank Capra pretty much gave birth to the fatuous, idiotic, pollyanna, small town, whitebread nonsense culture (or at least injected it into the mainstream vernacular) that enables simpletons to accept that Sarah Palin is a decent choice for Veep.
posted by psmealey at 12:11 PM on October 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

The undecideds could be swayed by a good dance-off.
posted by middleclasstool at 12:12 PM on October 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

"Simpletons." That's not very nice.
posted by MarshallPoe at 12:20 PM on October 23, 2008

Awesome!

Now do one for Arrested Development

Youve already got Winkler there!
posted by Senor Cardgage at 12:33 PM on October 23, 2008

I remember when I first learned James Stewart was not only a Republican

Lynn Swann was on CNN the other night all up McCain's ptootie. I saw him on a little four-head box on Larry King Live and told my friend "I loved Lynn Swann!" and then I turned the volume up and my mouth dropped as Swann tried to wiggle around for John McCain on the stick that was up his butt. I turned back to my friend and said "Well I hate Lynn Swann now".

You know how you know there's a significant chance Obama will win? (Well besides the fact that people are busting their rumps going out and knocking on doors, and I'm headed back out to do some more of that this evening), Eminem won Vibe's "best rapper ever" poll, racists are saying they'll vote Obama, Obama is possibly going to win Montana, and I officially can't stand Lynn freaking Swann like he was O.J.

Thank goodness that's the end of what I wanted to say cause I was running out of synonyms for ass.
posted by cashman at 12:44 PM on October 23, 2008

psmealey, leave Frank Capra out of it. He did what everybody during the war did, just better. Crediting him with envisaging a specifically insipid or fantastic new patriotism is a claim I can't at all get behind. I just don't think the thematic content of his pictures bears that out, despite his participation in propaganda, and think your claim kind of cynically misrepresents "small town" culture which was, we should grant, much more of a reality at the time, pre-television and all. Of course, reactionary people seeking to recreate that aw, shucks soda fountain milkman white people protestant jazz may co-opt a Capraesque aesthetic, but that's because they're morons.

And Capra certainly didn't define Jimmy Stewart's persona, Jimmy did more pictures with Hitchcock! What do you make of that?!
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:49 PM on October 23, 2008

James Stewart was conservative, but not closed minded. When Henry Fonda, who was very liberal, moved to Hollywood, he lived with Stewart, and the two were very close friends.

It's a Wonderful Life is often characterized as psmealey suggested, but the film was originally seen as representing a New Deal idiology, as were many of Capra's films: Tales of recovery and reform. I've often seen it as representing a battle between good capitalism and bad capitalism. Bailey Savings and Loan has an intimate, personal relationship with its clients, who are mostly the working poor, and assists them in getting new homes -- they would certainly be turned down as financial risks by Potter, but we actually see George Bailey driving an immigrant family to the house he has helped them purchase. We this happening nowadays, Bailey Savings and Loan would be exactly the sort of place that would be unfairly taking the heat for the subprime housing collapse. Pottersville, in the meanwhile, is a vision of greed run rampant. All of the houses that Bailey helped build are gone, replaced by sleazy entertainment joints and dive bars, all designed with one purpose in mind: to efficiently strip the money out of the pocket of the working man.

George Bailey himself doesn't idealize the small town life -- he spends the entire films trying to get away from it, to be foiled again and again by destiny. His final realization that he can be happy there is not because there is anything inherently wonderful about small towns, but because Geore Bailey has actively managed to make the small town better. That's the point of the film.

This is not a conservative view of the world. It's also a surprisingly dark and brooding film, dealing as it does with frustrated ambitions, the threat of economic ruin, and suicide. In the end, as far as I can tell, the message is that life can go pretty bad and takes a lot of disappointing twists, but we can genuinely improve it by being responsible for an active in our community. That's exactly the sort of thing the current Republican candidate for president mocks when he mocks Obama for being a community organizer, and blames ACORN for the stock market taking a dive.
posted by Astro Zombie at 12:51 PM on October 23, 2008 [18 favorites]

I think Mr. Smith was a pretty liberal populist actually.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 12:51 PM on October 23, 2008

I just realized that I have spent more time thinking about It's a Wonderful Life than any other film I have ever seen. Probably because it's the only film I can't watch without weeping, which embarrassed me for years, until I really examined the film and realized how genuinely sad and complicated it was. It was both Capra's and Stewart's first film after the way, and they were both hardened by the experience -- Stewart in particular refused to talk about the war, because he was traumetized by having killed people and seen people killed. I think that's where the really dark center of It's a Wonderful Life comes from. Were it not for the clowning of Clarence the Angel, the film would be almost exclusively bleak. The scene where Jimmy Stewart lashes out at Donna Reed because he realizes he's falling in love with her and that this will simply tie him down even further is an astounding piece of acting -- he seems about to lose him mind from his contradictory feelings.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:00 PM on October 23, 2008 [11 favorites]

After the war, rather.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:01 PM on October 23, 2008

voting for McCain: "like trying to fish for lake trout using peanut butter and jelly" for a third time.
posted by ericbop at 1:06 PM on October 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

I just realized that I have spent more time thinking about It's a Wonderful Life than any other film I have ever seen. Probably because it's the only film I can't watch without weeping, which embarrassed me for years, until I really examined the film and realized how genuinely sad and complicated it was. It was both Capra's and Stewart's first film after the way, and they were both hardened by the experience -- Stewart in particular refused to talk about the war, because he was traumetized by having killed people and seen people killed. I think that's where the really dark center of It's a Wonderful Life comes from. Were it not for the clowning of Clarence the Angel, the film would be almost exclusively bleak. The scene where Jimmy Stewart lashes out at Donna Reed because he realizes he's falling in love with her and that this will simply tie him down even further is an astounding piece of acting -- he seems about to lose him mind from his contradictory feelings.

Precisely!
This movie terribly and unfairly maligned as weightless schmaltz, I suspect by people that have only seen the first and last 10 minutes of it on television.
posted by Senor Cardgage at 1:09 PM on October 23, 2008

AZ, yes, that is an extraordinary scene (with Donna Reed)...and kinda *hot* in terms of repressed longing, too, for the time. You can understand why audiences at the time didn't really embrace it.

I love the film enough that I have a hard time watching it more than once a year; it always gets to me.

In terms of idealizing American small town life...maybe. You could also read it as condemning the ease with which people like Mr. Potter can run things, and without resistance, run them into the ground...all those decent people turned hard and ugly when things went south, didn't they? Even Ma Bailey! That's hardly idealized.
posted by emjaybee at 1:12 PM on October 23, 2008

offtopic: it's a wonderful life is fucking awesome.
posted by chunking express at 1:15 PM on October 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Not that this post's about Jimmy Stewart but I'll share this... many years before we met, an ex-boyfriend of mine was hired by Jimmy to run his house and assist his family so I got to hear quite a few stories about the experience when we were dating. Here's the impression I got: that someone so in the public eye openly put such personal trust in a refugee from Yugoslavia at that time (one who spoke like Dracula, no less), well it was a pretty liberal, open-minded and human thing to do. Conservatives were still worried about "evil communists reading their thoughts" back then, so my ex had nothing but gratitude and love for a man that gave him so much support when he was new to the country.

Plus, dude talked to invisible rabbits and wrote poems about his dead dogs and broken cameras. Which was kinda endearing.
posted by miss lynnster at 1:18 PM on October 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Sadly the Fonzie endorsement will mean more to my brother-in-law than anything else that has happened during this campaign.
posted by mazola at 1:22 PM on October 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

I don't mean to re-rail the post or anything, but I have to say the true sign of a professional is the ability to let somebody else trim your nose hairs with scissors while you read your lines on camera.

Bravo.
posted by SteveInMaine at 1:23 PM on October 23, 2008 [5 favorites]

Andy on warrantless wiretapping.
posted by EarBucket at 1:30 PM on October 23, 2008 [2 favorites]

dasheekeejones: "I'm still shocked Alice Cooper is a die hard Republican and Jesus freak."

And golfer.
posted by cjorgensen at 1:45 PM on October 23, 2008

James Stewart was not only a Republican -- he was actually a real John Birch right winger type

omg, what an awful shock that is. I didn't know.

God I love Ron Howard. That rocked.

It was kind of gross watching him getting his nosehair clipped. I did feel a bit violated with that and a bit queasy the first time he pulled off the wig and it made a little sucking sound. ewww.

It was incredible to see him play Opie again. that wig made such a difference. I missed him as Opie and didn't realize how much until I saw that. But hey, he just grew up. Grown up Opie and Andy voting for Obama. huh.

Something feels right in the world having seen that, even though the queasy in the tummy feeling hasn't quite settled yet.
posted by nickyskye at 2:01 PM on October 23, 2008

I can't watch Youtube at work...is that Fonzie PSA related to this?

Because if you haven't seen Henry Winkler sing a song called "P*nis is the Proper Word" then you haven't lived, my friends.
posted by emjaybee at 2:24 PM on October 23, 2008

Yes Alice Cooper, a republican. Maybe his alcohol addled brain is broken.
posted by Liquidwolf at 2:42 PM on October 23, 2008

James Stewart was conservative, but not closed minded.

I'm not sure that his friendship with Fonda is sufficient to persuade me of that. Apparently, early on in their friendship they got into a fistfight over politics, and afterwards agreed never to talk about the subject again. I like to think it was because Fonda whupped his ass.

omg, what an awful shock that is. I didn't know.

I'd known about his relentlessly hawkish support for the Vietnam war, but at the time I put that down to the curmudgenly moaning of an old veteran who'd -- unlike his pal John Wayne -- actually seen real action during WWII.

It was much more recently that I learned about this:

Along with his friends John Wayne and Ward Bond, Stewart strongly supported blacklisting in Hollywood during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era of the late 1940s and early 1950s. According to Michael Munn's biography "Jimmy Stewart: The Truth Behind the Legend" (2004), he worked as a secret agent for FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, rooting out suspected Communists from Hollywood. Hoover took advantage of Stewart's right-wing Republican politics and asked him to work undercover for the FBI in 1947, because Stewart's status as a famous, decorated war hero and officer in the Air Force Reserve made him the perfect choice to help flush out "subversives", his late wife Gloria Stewart recalled. According to the book, Stewart was so keen to assist Hoover that he spied on his closest friends, including Cary Grant and Frank Capra, who had directed him in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Stewart's wife recalled, "Jim went barefoot up the mountain and saw the burning bush - only God's name was J. Edgar Hoover. When Hoover realized Jim was willing to fight he played on it. Jim would have done anything to get those gangsters out of town. But he was concerned about how it would turn out for friends like Cary Grant, who'd developed friendships with these people"

I love his movies, I love his persona as an actor, but despite Miss Lynster's anecdotes to the contrary, as a human being he appears to have left a lot to be desired.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:32 PM on October 23, 2008

Also: I keep on expecting Ralph Malph to come out and make his own endorsement: "Ron Paul, 2012: Do Your Research."
posted by PeterMcDermott at 3:40 PM on October 23, 2008 [1 favorite]

Opie endorses Hopey.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:20 PM on October 23, 2008 [3 favorites]

John Wayne and Ward Bond, Stewart strongly supported blacklisting in Hollywood during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era

holy shit, No way!? Omg, I will never see him the same again. That is stunningly sad information.

Knowing how vicious and dangerous the Rigid Right aspect of the Republican party is capable of being, from Watergate, Joe McCarthy to Rove it takes serious cojones for anybody really in the public eye to stand up for Obama these days and it makes me respect Ron Howard all the more.

None of us know if the Republican corruption will succeed in stealing the vote again. Then anyone of social influence, who spoke out for Obama, may be marked as An Enemy, as Hoover, Nixon and others have done in the past.
posted by nickyskye at 6:06 PM on October 23, 2008

John Wayne and Ward Bond, Stewart strongly supported blacklisting in Hollywood during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era

Even more reasons to love 'em.

And re: Opie, Andy, and The Fonz: meh. It was sorta endearing, in a nostalgic way, but celebrity endorsements are just so lame that I'm surprised any of them do it at all.

And it's amazing how that wig transformed Ron Howard into Opie and then Richie. Behold the power of hair!
posted by davidmsc at 9:01 PM on October 23, 2008

Even more reasons to love 'em.

Back in the day, conservatives could end Hollywood careers, these days all they have are "Michael Moore is fat" jokes.
posted by octobersurprise at 6:07 AM on October 24, 2008

Ron Howard explains how he got Andy Griffith involved. And here's audio of the interview.
posted by miss lynnster at 11:29 AM on October 24, 2008

I don't know how many people remembered she was running, but Paris Hilton has sought the advice of the most esteemed fake president of our generation for her own campaign.
posted by jb at 8:34 PM on October 25, 2008

dasheekeejones: "I'm still shocked Alice Cooper is a die hard Republican and Jesus freak."

And golfer.
posted by cjorgensen at 1:45 PM on October 23 [+] [!]

Knew the golfing part. My husband did a charity golfing match with him. He loves Alice (tattoo on the arm, autographs, etc.). But we forgive him for his Republican misguidance. :)
posted by dasheekeejones at 6:19 AM on October 27, 2008