Once again, the best political screenwriter alive, Aaron Sorkin, delivers in The American President-
President Andrew Shepherd breaking into White House Press Conference:
America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You gotta want it bad ’cause it’s gonna put up a fight. It’s gonna say “You want free speech? Let’s see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil, who’s standing center stage, advocating at the tope of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours.” You want to claim this land as the land of the free? Then the symbol of this country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, celebrate that, defend that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free.
We have serious problems to solve and we need serious people to solve them. And whatever your particular problem is, I promise you Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He is interested in two things and two things only: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how you win elections.”
Art preceding life. Andrew Shepherd becomes Barack Obama, Bob Rumson morphs into Sarah Palin.
The internet, I’ve discovered, has everything. And I am going to start finding it now. I am not about to let this president be smothered by nonsense.
Game on, girlfriend.