Shana Pearlman, author of The Palin Effect: Money, Sex and Class in the New American Politics, is thoroughly unimpressed, but not surprised, at Sarah Palin’s portrayal in HBO’s Game Change…
Game Change, a lavishly produced HBO production about the selection of Governor Sarah Palin as Senator John McCain’s running mate in the 2008 presidential election, had its UK premiere on Saturday. Everything was as expected – Julianne Moore captured the look, if not the voice, of the Alaskan governor; Ed Harris was suitably noble and honourable as the avuncular Senator; Woody Harrelson was duly saintly as the long-suffering campaign manager. The film did what it was supposed to do, which was inspire horror in its ideological fellow travelers that Palin came this close to capturing the Vice Presidency, and gratitude to President Obama for saving them from such monsters. If Twitter is any guide, it did its job in this respect reasonably well.
There were lots of factual errors in the film. For example, at one point in the campaign Julianne Moore as Palin is asked about Troopergate, a scandal in which she was investigated for abusing her power in firing a state trooper. In the film, Palin says she’s been cleared of all wrongdoing; Woody Harrelson as campaign manager takes great umbrage to this, as he says it’s a lie. Wrong-o! Palin was in fact exonerated of any wrongdoing in the scandal, and anyway they couldn’t have discussed it at that point in the campaign, as the report in question didn’t come out till 3 November 2008, on the eve of the election.
Another howler is when Palin wishes to give a concession speech after the election and Steve Schmidt thunders that “No losing Vice Presidential nominee has ever given a concession speech! It violates American tradition and history!” Try again buttercup, losing Vice Presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro gave a concession speech on 6 November 1984.
I’m of the opinion that when there are numerous things wrong in a film, it’s difficult to believe any of the assertions that the film makes. If they can’t get it right that no losing vice presidential nominee has made a speech conceding an election, how can we know that the assertions that Palin didn’t know that the PM, not the Queen, is Britain’s leader, or didn’t understand the difference between North and South Korea? We can’t. The entire thing becomes suspect.
And even if it were true that Palin was as dumb as a box of hair, does it really matter? I mean, for the past three years we’ve had a Vice President who is ignorant of foreign policy, history, and the US Constitution (as well as the name of the President of the United States and the names of football teams in various US cities), and it hasn’t been the end of the world.
The whole point of Game Change is to make people who are disappointed by what’s happened since 2008 feel better about the decision they made. Nobody wants to self-identify as a rube, and if a lavishly produced film can make everyone breathe a sigh of relief and say, “well, at least we escaped that,” so much the better. It makes us feel good. It gives us that little dopamine high we feel when our suspicions are proved correct. One of the movie’s enthusiastic fans told me that it was a “dramatization, not a documentary,” as I complained about factual errors. And he’s more right than he knows – it’s not even a dramatization, it’s a feel-good fictional romp for the urban professional masses, cheerful propaganda designed to buck up the spirits of progressive voters. Who cares if it slanders another person or makes political discourse ever more poisonous (as one person tweeted, “every time [Palin] opens her mouth I want to punch her in the face!”)? As long as it makes people feel good and confirms the beliefs they already have, it’s done its job.