Game Change: Where our current political insanity began

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Netflix Review:by Kay Ebeling


Towards the end of Game Change, a crowd is hollering “Socialist” and “Muslim” when John McCain mentions Barack Obama at a Republican rally and Ed Harris as McCain gets a look of pain on his face. He’s shocked at the radical hate-filled words coming from his followers. That moment is pivotal in American history, the beginning of the whacked out weirdness that is dominating our political climate today.

Game Change gave me a renewed respect for McCain and I even ended up feeling kind of sorry for Sarah Palin after seeing the HBO production, as Palin was in way over her head and should never have been put in that position of running-mate to begin with.

But Pandora’s box was open, the bigotry and extremism that Palin brought out in crowds is still with us today, inspiring gun nuts who massacre innocent people in crowded places, feeding anti-Muslim anti-liberal animosity that dominates politics today so much that it's almost impossible to hold a conversation in public.

Reactionary name-calling has replaced political dialogue and it may take decades for the country to recover. Game Change made me see how much the mistake of putting Sarah Palin in as a vice presidential candidate has had reverberations five years later.

I'm a progressive but I've always liked John McCain, I like any Republican or Independent who can engage in intelligent discourse. However, today the hate-filled hollerers have come to dominate politics. I hope it stops soon.

Game Change is a history lesson, as well as an example of how great actors can inhabit a role: Harrelson, Moore, and especially Ed Harris are wonderful and I'm keeping the disk to watch it a few more times before returning it to Netflix. Wish there was more meaningful drama like this being produced today.

http://www.hbo.com/movies/game-change/index.html