Clint Eastwood: Trump is Taking on The "Pussy Generation"

I don't think he likes Trump all that much, but this much he likes.

ESQ: Your characters have become touchstones in the culture, whether it's Reagan invoking "Make my day" or now Trump … I swear he's even practiced your scowl.

CE: Maybe. But he's onto something, because secretly everybody's getting tired of political correctness, kissing up. That's the kiss-ass generation we're in right now. We're really in a pussy generation. Everybody's walking on eggshells. We see people accusing people of being racist and all kinds of stuff. When I grew up, those things weren't called racist. And then when I did Gran Torino, even my associate said, "This is a really good script, but it's politically incorrect." And I said, "Good. Let me read it tonight." The next morning, I came in and I threw it on his desk and I said, "We're starting this immediately."

ESQ: What is the "pussy generation"?

CE: All these people that say, "Oh, you can't do that, and you can't do this, and you can't say that." I guess it's just the times.

ESQ: What do you think Trump is onto?

CE: What Trump is onto is he's just saying what's on his mind. And sometimes it's not so good. And sometimes it's … I mean, I can understand where he's coming from, but I don't always agree with it.

ESQ: So you're not endorsing him?

CE: I haven't endorsed anybody. I haven't talked to Trump. I haven't talked to anybody. You know, he's a racist now because he's talked about this judge. And yeah, it's a dumb thing to say. I mean, to predicate your opinion on the fact that the guy was born to Mexican parents or something. He's said a lot of dumb things. So have all of them. Both sides. But everybody—the press and everybody's going, "Oh, well, that's racist," and they're making a big hoodoo out of it. Just fucking get over it. It's a sad time in history.

...

ESQ: What do you think of Hillary?

CE: What about her? I mean, it's a tough voice to listen to for four years. It could be a tough one. If she's just gonna follow what we've been doing, then I wouldn't be for her.

ESQ: But if the choice is between her and Trump, what do you do?

CE: That's a tough one, isn't it? I'd have to go for Trump … you know, 'cause she's declared that she's gonna follow in Obama's footsteps. There's been just too much funny business on both sides of the aisle. She's made a lot of dough out of being a politician. I gave up dough to be a politician. I'm sure that Ronald Reagan gave up dough to be a politician.

In between those parts he discusses the Empty Chair bit he did at the 2012 convention.

Meanwhile, Bret Easton Ellis, the bad boy young novelist of the 1980s, has similar thoughts on his podcast.

The podcast is mainly focused on film, and the issue of social media and modern journalistic discourse bleeds into this area as it has had an unquestionable effect on artistic output in the past couple of years. On a previous episode, guest and Bored To Death creator Jonathan Ames confessed to having recently pulled out of writing an article for a publication simply because he feared the often overwhelming online backlash writers now face.

In the latest instalment but one, ahead of a very interesting, not-unrelated interview with The Invitation director Karyn Kusama which I implore you to listen to, Bret let rip with an opening monologue calling out the "authoritarian language police", with "your strict set of little rules and manufactured outrage, demanding apologies from every sandwich or salad you didn't like".

The American Psycho author would probably be the first to admit that he went a little too far at times, and has previously confessed to delighting in stoking controversy and acting the contrarian on Twitter, but there's some incredibly cogent stuff in there about the paradoxically fascist aspect to the 'this is the only opinion you are allowed to hold' tacit rules of leftist social media.

The podcast is here.

I don't think half of this party gets how sick the other half of us are of this shit. Half of the party is still trying to imitate the left, and set up their own lists of Things You Cannot Say, or trying to rescue the "good parts" of political correctness.

And there are indeed some good parts. But very few. And a lot of the Political Correctness regime seems to be being saved to save just those few defensible parts of it.

This is a major factor in the class-based schism in the GOP: One class, which never had much truck with the leftist-promulgated/college-inculcated speech codes, is completely against this bullshit, and the college educated folk are trying to rescue a Decent Speech Code out of he horrorshow of the left's speech codes.

I'm not sure which side is right. I do know that the college crowd seems determined to rescue far too much of this nonsense; witness the sudden fiction that you're now not allowed to insult a parent who lost his son twelve years ago after he just insulted you.

At some point, politeness seems to just be a polite euphemism for hectoring, harassing speech control.

Speech policing is just another form of the leftists' favorite method of politicking -- rent seeking. And the rent they seek is your deference and your acceptance of their higher-caste status.

And that's huge. It has huge impacts. Crap like that is why Sarah Palin can be called a Temptress Whore but if you make one joke about the "hero" Sandra Fluke, you get boycotted.

Once you accept the (now nakedly stated) premise that some people simply have greater Social Privileges than others, that's the ball game -- you have now accepted that this is a caste-based society, and the castes have a heirarchy of priority of rights.

And guess where you fall in that heirarchy?

Spoiler alert: Not near the top.

posted by Ace at 05:55 PM

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