Infinite Monkeys

HBO won't let go of the 2000 election

A new HBO movie, "Recount," premieres Sunday -- right in the heart of Memorial Day weekend. That's a fitting time to air the movie, since Democrats will apparently mourn the loss in the "stolen" election in Florida the way others mourn the loss of war dead.

Never forget! (sob, sniff, wimper) Always mark the day of Karl Rove's coup!

Boo hoo, losers.

Anyway, it's an all-star cast, with most of the actors made up to be spitting images of the people they portray. Laura Dern has enough eye makeup on to, well, look a lot like Katherine Harris. Ed Begley Jr. looks just like Democratic power lawyer David Boies. And the chamelon-like Tom Wilkinson even nails James Baker's oft-photographed stern facial expression.

Only Kevin Spacey and Denis Leary look like, well, themselves.

I'm not going to watch the movie. And wouldn't even if I had HBO. It's time, as some smarty pants liberals said back in the '90s, to move on.

Director Jay Roach promises to deliver an even-handed look at the Florida debacle. I don't believe him. The movie's web site lets you vote on the question: "Who really won the 2000 Presidential Election?" And it snidely asks you to "Cast Your Ballot. We promise to count it this time."

Ha ha. I'm guessing the producers of this movie aren't going to note that Gore didn't want to count every ballot, but only those in heavy Dem areas. And that the Gore team put out a memo on how to throw out mostly Republican military ballots arriving from overseas (The Dems backed down under intense public pressure).

Nah! The baddies, I'm guessing, will all be on the "red" side. Typical Hollywood.

But a fun activity is taking the challenge put forth by the Sun-Sentinel newspaper and trying to cast your vote with a replica of the 2000 butterfly ballot. You know, the "confusing" ballot that (ahem!) Democrats designed?

I tried it and was congratulated for voting for correctly. Thanks guys. I also managed to tie my own shoes this morning. Can I get an atta-boy for that, too?

UPDATE: Byron York got a look at an advance screening of Recount. And -- SURPRISE! -- my instincts were corrrect:

Once upon a time there was an election. A very good man won the election, but it was really, really close, and a very bad man claimed that he had won the election. And a group of brave, strong people tried to recount the votes to prove that the very good man had won the election, but they were so high-minded and good that they just wouldn't fight dirty, while a group of cruel, mean people would do anything to stop the counting so that the very bad man could win. When the counting got under way, the very bad man's lead got smaller and smaller, and the very good man was about to win until a group of very, very, very bad people in Washington DC stopped it all, and the very bad man won. The end.

Heh.

Posted by Dr. Zaius at May 21, 2008 10:45 PM | TrackBack