This is from this evening’s Hardball. James Lipton of the Actor’s Studio has some great comments on last night’s debate and the character of the debaters. Very much worth watching to the end.
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Small steps, small steps, but getting there! Both Matthews and Lipton almost said it why folks like Romney look down upon this President …
What Martin Luther King said…That’s the admonition I’ll hold as true because the content of Romney’s character points to the way I should vote.
The word of God tells me to flee from Romney.
Lipton’s comments reveal a truth that has been very clear to me for a long time. Romney is the sniveling, pea-brained executive who shuts down your plant because he CAN– because he has been invested with the power to do so by an equally vapid Circle of Jerks.
His comments on the first debate were insightful and humorous as well. In reference to Romney’s chutzpah he’d marvelled that Romney trotted out onto the stage to fire the moderator AND big bird. I used to think him too tedious but am now convinced he’s one sharp cookie.
The years of heavy drug use is finally catching up to me..My ability to recall has really been impaired, of course age might be a factor also, but I can’t remember if Romney’s tax return was 813 pages long, or whether it was 831 pages. It might seem like an insignificant thing to concern myself with just 22 pages that probably are just tiresome lists of Ann’s Swiss and Belgian accounts, and maybe a few Cayman holdings, but it’s difficult accepting a diminishing capacity in any respect. Oh well, Romney’s not going to get elected anyway, so why do I bother?
Eugen Robinson points out that “Allowing Obama to make direct appeals to women and Latinos was probably not in the Romney game plan” and also noted that “Tuesday night, with Obama playing offense, Romney had to dial his own performance up a notch. At times he seemed a little cranky, a little flustered.”
In the context set by Lipton this is the ire of a boss who finds, that despite being boss, the hierlings like one of Boss’ managers more than boss himself. Money can’t buy him love. He can be boss but he can’t get no respect. That has to be earned.
Th 18 Oct 2012
00:35 PDT
I appreciate the difficulty the Mr. Lipton has in “reading” Mitt Romney. It is now a commonplace among pundits and other observers that he (Romney) is somehow inscrutable, a cipher, slippery, elusive, etc. But I would suggest that DSM-IV might provide a framework in which Mr Romney suddenly becomes very understandable. The attribute that rings loudly true to me for him is “sociopath.” I do not have professional psychiatric or psychological training, but I do have both my own close and long connection with psychiatric analysis, and, by chance, close experience with a former colleague who exhibited (exhibits?) so many of the behavioral tics we see slip out in the public Romney. A different very close and respected colleague and I puzzled and fumed for years over said colleague’s behavior until she one day hit upon the key: sociopathy. In that framework, everything we see of Mitt Romney comes clearly into focus. I suspect that sociopaths do not make for effective national leaders.
==Mel Strom
A few things:
One, the first. Mitt E. Coyote and his team of ACME strategists had constructed what they thought was the perfect trap to catch that pesky President Road Runner on what happened at the Benghazi Consulate in Libya.
And as Mitt E. Coyote realized it’s time to spring his carefully planned trap, and as you watch him approach his prey, practically slavering, and rubbing his fork against his knife in anticipation of the meal, you can see President Obama, knowing what’s about to happen, say, “Please proceed, Governor…” Me might as well have said, “MEEP! MEEP!!” Because Mitt E. Coyote, drooling now, put his foot in the noose he had laid on the ground, and it caught him by the leg, slammed him into the sled he had carefully placed, and it proceeded to roll off the cliff, where the sled falls down in an instant, but against all the laws of gravity, Mitt E. Coyote is left hanging in the air. You could practically see him look at the audience, blink at the camera, pull out a sign with one hand that said, “OUCH,!” and with the other, waved his little Mitt E. Coyote bye-bye wave, as gravity suddenly catches him and sends him plummeting into the canyon below, where the camera shows him go “POOF!”. Instead of saying “Can you say that louder, Candy,” Obama might as well have said, “MEEP! MEEP!!” again, and sat down.
Point the second, Lipton is a keen judge of character. Most actors and acting teachers are – or, the good ones, I should say. And Lipton is great at what he does.
And what he saw was, indeed, ‘Mitt as a Boss.’
But Mitt’s not really the boss of everyone. He now is representative of ALL of the bosses.
Look at Alec Baldwin in this brief scene here from “Glengarry Glen Ross,” and tell me Mitt wouldn’t have also done this scene as brutally and as well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=wVQPY4LlbJ4
That’s the Mitt in the debates. “ABC Mitt:” Always Be Closing Romney.
I’m only sorry that I couldn’t find the whole scene from the movie, because that whole scene is a microcosm of Mitt’s outlook on life.
I don’t want to go OT, but since Lipton is from Actors Studio, I’m reminded of my audition there in early ’82. Someone remind me on some future slow news day, to tell you the story about how I killed Lee Strasberg – at least according to my late father.
Mel Strom, I think you are correct. I noted the sociopathic qualities of Mr. Romney’s personality some time ago – once I started paying attention to him, that is. If he is elected President, well, God help us all.
But I would suggest that DSM-IV might provide a framework in which Mr Romney suddenly becomes very understandable.
Anybody who has to try to sell/con people on the idea that they possess compassion is clue enough for me. Mitt’s not like other boys..a
closecursory examination of his character reveals similar characteristics that can be found in guys like Jeffery Dahmer and Ted Bundy absent the expressions of violence.It’s obvious, or should be obvious, that Mitt is detached from the common thread that binds us all as social creatures. Whether he’s harvesting profits without an understanding or care of the connection to lives those profits adversely effect or trying to create an impression of kinship and love from a dying child or fallen hero. He’s a spiritually sick man that can be best understood by the saying of Christ.”.You shall know them by their fruits.”
I’m no expert in mentsl health, but I know a smug asshole when I see one, Mitt is the KING of smug assholes.